As a child, I was afraid of ghosts, space aliens, and reanimated corpses rising from the grave. At night, every creak, groan, or reverberation throughout my childhood home would raise the hair on the back of my neck, and these monsters would haunt my dreams, chasing me around the neighborhood.
As an adult, the fear of alien abductions, spectral visitors, and zombies dissipated, gone back to the ether with the realization that none of these haunts are real. Something far more sinister replaced them, and I see it in the mirror some mornings.
It's the unavoidable march of time, the ever-extending lines around my face and the widening bags under my eyes. It's the strands of hair growing in weird places, (like the ears). It's this idea that I may die without birthing the worlds that exist within me, without passing my daydreams on in hopes that someone finds life and rejuvenation within them. Worse, this fear is rooted in the notion that the hand that prevents me from releasing them is my own. Willingly.
On particularly bad days, the reflection I see gazing back from the mirror has tired, dead eyes. Its skin sags and grows in pallor, and the gleam of hope is lost. Even under the bright, new bulbs, its eyes are bottomless pits. This reflection has given up, has let the day-to-day eat away at the worlds in its head, and it reminds me that it's coming for me, too.
But then I walk away from the mirror, stay off social media, and put my fingers on the keyboard. I feel the worn vowel keys, the ones that clack much looser than the "X's" or "Y's." A word bubbles to the surface, and I type. Then another word. And yet one more. I type these as well.
The dried-out, withered reflection of my nightmares now sits nearly submerged in a dense, misty swamp, and the water around him is bubbling with thoughts and ideas. Its scaly skin is dampened, and color returns to its form.
There's no shortage of advice on what to do when time is a factor but inspiration is not. Crawl the web, and it's there, the same words scrambled in different ways. An orchestra of individual instruments all tuned to the same composition. But advice is easy, and taking it is even easier, especially to wield as a weapon against ourselves when we don't follow it.
Sometimes, it's not that we don't want to create, but rather it's about the fear of nothingness, the great abyss threatening to lay waste to imagination. That creature in the mirror isn't here because we're strapped for time. It's here to feed us hopelessness.
Sometimes, we don't create because we feel like imposters and sometimes because creating feels futile. It's this fear of gaining nothing, and in turn, being nothing, and this sensation grows from a place of loss and helplessness. It's a lack of hope in the idea that our worlds will ever transcend space and touch the heart and mind of another person.
It's easy to get overwhelmed by this void and shut down, to click-and-drag that word file to the trash, never to be seen again. No amount of scheduling creative time can dampen desiccation.
I don't know what the answer is. I, too, feel it. It comes in waves, like erratic weather patterns. Some days I'm endowed with purpose, and on others I feel the uselessness of even trying.
I liken it to being trapped in an escape room. While we're there, it's dark, miserable, and overwhelmed with negative emotions. There's no one key that'll unlock it. Rather, we each have to figure out the complex locking mechanism. It's not obvious, but it's there, usually involving a series of unrelated steps that will inevitably open the door. This could mean putting down that paintbrush or closing that laptop for a while. It could mean playing through a videogame or walking around a park with an overpriced (but freakin' delicious) cup of coffee. It could mean all of the above and more, and each time we're in that escape room, the locking mechanism could change. We just need to be careful that it doesn't get too complicated to solve.
That thing in the mirror is always going to be with us. It's a part of us we don't want to acknowledge because it reminds us of our weaknesses, of our lack of resolve in a world where people post the good things on social media and often omit the bad. If we give in, this thing in the mirror could threaten to destroy us, so we lock it away. We bury it, and in turn, when it escapes, it locks us away. That's not healthy, and we need to find a better way to deal with our two selves.
I interviewed author Ram V recently about his current run on Detective Comics, and among the many things we talked about, we discussed duality. We traveled down the rabbit hole on how, as a society, we treat our problems by locking them away or hiding them, and in turn, it sets in motion a perpetual cycle between two forces.
I feel like that's what's going on here when futility rears its head. We can't balk at the thing in the mirror and feed it our disappointment, anger, frustration, and sadness. We need to acknowledge its existence, and let it know that it's okay, that it's permissible to exist. We need to stop stressing about what we're not doing and focus on how we can nurture and mend two halves into one. Sometimes, we may even need to skip writing or drawing for the evening and take that dark self out for a cheeseburger.
Why? Because in the history of stories, novels, pop culture dealing with duality, it only ends one of two ways: Either two halves mesh into one, supporting each other with their respective strengths, or the dark self threatens to destroy everything.
Embrace that thing in the mirror. Feed it love when it feeds you absence. Acknowledge that its fears can keep you alive and level-headed, and ask it to acknowledge your optimism and belief in a better tomorrow.
You may go weeks without creating because you're managing the weight of the world and more. It's okay. I say it almost every time, but if you haven't heard it in a while, I'll say it again.
The fact that you create and add beauty to the world is admirable and worthwhile. The fact that your mind can churn out imagination and creativity is incredible, and somewhere, out there, someone believes in you. I do as well.
We're all in this together,
Scott
Listen to my interview with Tim Maxwell, creator of Neuverse Creative (and a whole bunch of awesome audio dramas).
Find me at ScottWaldynWrites.com.
Thanks for writing this. It hit home for me. Thanks for taking the time so often to articulate what it means to be creative.