Creator Mindset: Curing Cancer vs Making Bubble Gum

Shifting my creative perspective

I missed an anniversary. My Youtube channel turned 6 years old on December 25th and with a little over 1500 subs and 237 videos, is an absolute failure by most analytics and I'm, finally, ok with that.

Let me be clear, my channel has failed by many standards, one of which is that it is, to my knowledge, no ones favorite channel. I am rarely tagged in a post with someone saying, "Did you see this?"

This is also true of this newsletter, which is still in its infancy, but I'm not mad about it, anymore, and the reason is this, I'm not a scientist trying to cure cancer. I make bubble gum.

Cancer researches are doing good work. They take their job seriously and rightfully so. They show up to a lab or a hospital, trying to cure the most devastating disease for which we have few answers.

I, on the other hand, do not show up to lab, I show up to a studio, a key board, a mic and a camera trying to make different flavors of bubble gum, hoping one becomes your favorite flavor. Heath Ledger’s Joker was right,

If you are a creative, like me, you have hopes (I would think) that what you make will be liked and appreciated and sometimes, if you create something really cool, you may even have delusions of grandeur and believe that it’s a “game changer”

My lab mindset has leaned towards solving problems, to make stuff that gets views, likes and comments to satisfy the voracious algorithm and to achieve something called success that I can't really even define.

Have you ever gone to a fair and watch someone make taffy or cotton candy or watched someone draw a caricaturist of someone and thought, "I'd like some of that."

This is who I want to be; the artist who creates for wonder, does it in real time and hopes people will like it enough to get some themselves.

There are two quotes that are helping me change my "lab" mindset to a "studio" mind, both are from from Joshua Heath Scott, 5 Things Every Creative Person Should Consider (Inspired By Wendell Berry) video.

In this video, Joshua talks about the creative process and offers this quote by Wendall Berry,

"I am less important than I thought, I rejoice in that. My mind loses its urgings, senses its nature and is free"

Joshua calls creatives out by saying, and I paraphrase

"We do not feel successful due to not enough likes or we feel like the Youtube Algorithm is screwing us, we feel unimportant."

Josh nails it when he says that those watching his video are likely making things, a book that will be read, a song heard, etc. and hoping they will be liked. Then he says,

"We all just want to make things but we are slightly crippled because we think they have to be accepted. That's not art, that's not creativity. You're not that important."

He also says, "If you don't like what I make, I am still going to make it"

Recognizing my unimportance, in the grand scheme of things, is the most freeing thing I can do every time I create something because it frees me to make bubble gum not cure cancer. To make something I love whether anyone else loves it or not.

Here’s to the joy of bubble gum and I hope you like some of my flavors.

Do any of these sentiments resonate with you?