The Idea of Being a Creator

-Pastor Melissa Fain-

Creation always begins the same way all creation begins, with nothing. Then the blueprint for the creation comes into existence. For me, that blueprint is almost always in my brain. I imagine what needs to be built. I see it in its entirety, and pull it apart mentally. Then, I only have to figure out the pieces to the whole, not the whole item itself.

The problem today:

1. No one wants to start with nothing: The movie industry keeps digging franchises up because they're afraid to try something new. We print out other people’s art, and call it our own. To be fair, ‘nothing’ is a scary word. Not everything has to start with complete nothingness. It’s just, most of us, when we take the seed of something else, are terrified of building something new with that seed.
2. Failure has always been an option: I have these, in my mind now, horrible looking shark earrings. They look like they are biting my ears. They were one of my first pairs I’ve ever made. I saw them on Wish, didn’t want to wait a month to get them, and just made my own pair. I wore them all the time! Now that I’ve been making polymer creations for years, I look back at them, and they look blobby to me. Kid’s ask me, what are those? They don’t do that with my newer creations. That’s because in the beginning, even in my successes, I failed. I didn’t even realize I was failing, but it didn’t matter. I did it with gusto. So many are afraid of those failures. They pit themselves against those who have already failed a million times, and learned from their failures. Because I’ve always put myself out there, I get the opportunity to look back and see how far I’ve come.
3. IT’S WORK!!!: Creation looks like magic, so there are many who want to become magicians of the chaos. What they discover is knowing the trick takes hard work, and really destroys the illusion. I always invite people to do ANYTHING I’ve done because most realize it’s hard work and leave with a new appreciation. (With a few realizing they want to put in the work themselves. That’s incredibly satisfying.) The easier I make it look, the more work that went into making it look that easy. That’s either through repetition over many years, or grunt work before a project begins.
   
   And finally
   
   
4. We don't value the work: No one wants to pay for actual creation. At least not for the actual time it takes to do the work. Simply put, people don't want to work to create something new, and the same people don't want to pay to have others do the work for them.  This means, people who actually could create, give up before they give anything of substance, and people who do create stop because their time is not valued. Wanna know why we're struggling with new Churches? Wanna know why we're rehashing old ideas poorly? All of what I just said. 

That's all. Just explaining why we live in a creative vacuum right now.
That's the conclusion of my soap box, enjoy the rest of your day.