1.6 OPM; or The Value of Creativity

State of mind: contemplative
Current soundtrack: The sound of crickets and nighttime traffic

So I DID manage to take a successful nap last night—woke up, and all—but it did result in some very strange (if very nice) dreams afterwards. My good friends Lu, Es and Prog, did we not discuss this issue very carefully? We do not want any repetitions of last year's Hikoboshi Incidents Mad Mood Swings of Doom. Settle down, give it a few years. We'll all get satisfaction eventually. I hope.

Some more buildup to the main topic of this post: I promised the readership of my old blog (soon to be locked completely, is my guess) that when I went through this term's Marketing and Creative Thinking class, I'd keep a tally of how many times the lecturer said 'okay'. Without giving too much detail away, said lecturer is known to be quite...'flouncy', and this is even more pronounced when he gets excited about something - hence the decision to make a finalised tally. In the space of almost two hours, he said the word over 100 times, and his final count is about 1.6 okays-per-minute. (Of course, I should talk. If I was relating this to you verbally, every third word would have been 'like'. :P)

Aaaanyway. Part of the lecture involved asking people what creativity was, and what the value/purpose of creativity was. As the lecturer put it, why do clients hire us? After much debate up and down and various oh-so-close(?) answers, he delivered his answer: it makes more money. And really, that's all there is to it.

Somehow, this doesn't sound right to me. I mean, sure, we're all going to end up creating commercial art of some sort; that's how we're going to earn our rice/bread/carbs. But that can't be the be-all and end-all of things. Even if you are creative, and you make piles of money, if you hate your work, hate what you do and have to drag yourself to the computer/easel/storyboard every morning...I hate to break it to you, but you probably shouldn't be doing this for the next 30 years. Call me a bit idealistic, but the last bit is common sense. If you're going to be slogging, it might as well be for something you really love. Then it won't even be a slog. To me, the greatest value of creativity is that it improves the quality of life. I figure that counts as making you happy, making things easier and serving as a coping mechanism. The world stops dead without its engine of imagination and thought.

There was supposed to be more to this, but 1) I figured I'd keep it short and 2) I don't trust myself to go on much longer without rambling and/or engaging in the sin of TMI. ;) And don't tell, but one thing I did want to define creativity as was 'eating dirt and shitting diamonds'. ;)