Exit Funk, Stage Left
Filed Under: creativity, personal
You might have noticed that I was in a bit of a funk last week. Thank you to everyone who made lovely comments on my last post. I was feeling a little ashamed about my whining there, so I haven’t thanked or replied to anyone individually. I appreciate you all being there for me when I get like this. Thank you for putting up with it.
I’m seeing things more clearly this week, and I feel some energy returning. Part of the problem I suspect was that I had a really nasty cold, combined with coming down from all the excitement of being back home to see folks.
I’m focusing all my energy right now on becoming the best web designer I can. I think the time for exploring other potential careers is not when you’re scraping by as a freelancer. I’ve been slow to commit to life as a freelancer, worried about any number of things associated with it, but I’m slowly conquering those fears and starting to treat my business like, well, a business, instead of just a guy working out of his office all day.
I have plans to rebuild this site from the ground up, as well as build a photo store to sell prints of my landscape photography. Stay tuned for more about all that in the future.
Thanks for hanging in there with me. I will hopefully start to have cool things to show and share again soon.
The Evolutionary Basis for Creative Depression
Filed Under: creativity
Last week, The Economist ran a really fascinating article on recent research into the evolutionary benefits of depression. Why do we get depressed? Why did such a trait come to be, and if it’s so detrimental to our health, why hasn’t it been selected against in the population?
Dr Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.
Unobtainable or unrealistic goals? Like, say, beating the odds and selling a story to the New Yorker? Or selling a screenplay to Hollywood for 6 figures? Or how about winning a Hugo award before you turn 30? Could this explain why an unusually high number of artists and creative types suffer from depression?
Creativity is often all about unrealistic goals. The problem is, without them, we would not strive to achieve the things we do finally achieve. Aim for the stars, shoot for the moon, as they say. So, depression is tied directly to our ambition and stick-to-it-iveness? From the article:
Dr Nesse believes that persistence is a reason for the exceptional level of clinical depression in America—the country that has the highest depression rate in the world. “Persistence is part of the American way of life,” he says. “People here are often driven to pursue overly ambitious goals, which then can lead to depression.” He admits that this is still an unproven hypothesis, but it is one worth considering. Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of living in a dynamic society.
Depression, an inevitability of a dynamic society and a creative lifestyle? What do you think? Is it possible that those of us who suffer so much “creative” anguish would be much happier with our lives if we aimed lower? But would that just be giving up, and just as bad as being depressed? Which is worse, a lack of ambition or being depressed?
