Things stop me from creating. Most of them stem from myself, seemingly, but that may be an illusion: If the thing we are trying to achieve must be routed through one’s heart, as with the process of creation, then it would have to appear from the perspective of one’s head that they take root in the heart and spring outwards — when, in fact, they merely burrow through, build highways through the arteries, emotional shipping lanes, and export them out in convenient pre-packaged form into the world. It is difficult to know, when the supply chain of personal productivity breaks down, whether the fault lies within or without. It all looks the same from the control tower.
It’s hard. First it’s hard to create thinking that no one cares, that you’re throwing ideas and insights of great personal value into a void, an insignificant voice crying out in vain to be noticed: Then it’s hard to create thinking that someone does care, that your ideas perhaps will contain vast holes that you didn’t notice and that they will think you’re foolish, jumping to conclusions – or, worse, that they will never notice the holes, and accept your flawed logic, and live by it, and be harmed by it.
Those are the easy fears, though. Those are the ones that can be named, can be described, can be struggled against. The real challenges come dark and anonymous, unnamed, indescribable. The sudden anger at your own words, sitting innocuous on the page, their inexplicable and inexcusable inadequacy, their trite worthlessness, their pedestrian insipidness. It’s impossible! It’s impossible to continue on writing this garbage! Or: The sudden sorrow, deep and unyielding… Why write? What are you trying to prove? It will all be forgotten. These words are just egotistical Tourette’s skidmarks on an immaculate possibility space: They are not relevant. You are not relevant.
And you stop.
Or not. I haven’t stopped yet. I continue to write. But more acutely I become aware that this isn’t a battle I can afford to fight forever, at least on this specific battlefield. One day, I will eventually, inevitably, exhaust my topic: Eventually I will tire or run out of ideas to discuss when it comes to creativity and games, and I will move on.
And on, and on, and on.
Every time the angers and sorrows come to me, I tell myself that, though someday that end will come, and someday my work here will be complete, this is not that day. Not yet. It is reassuring to know that I don’t have to do this forever – well, I don’t need to do it at all, do I? But the same ship that brought me here is still sailing, and when it comes around on its next pass that might be my time to board, to explore somewhere new. I have things to say and to do, but they needn’t always be these things.
All that being said, my work here is not complete. When I leave this battlefield, I would prefer that I do so victorious.