Overwhelming Creator Mindset
Overwhelming Creator Mindset
When does a creator mindset become toxic?
This weekend, I was at a gaming convention, Gamicon, in Cedar Rapids. I spent time with friends, I played a ton of games, and I stared at the small artist alley. I didn’t go to Gamicon 2024 to have a table and move artwork. Like GenCon over the summer, I went to Gamicon to hangout and be a gamer. Yet, there I was looking at the few folks selling their wares. I recognized them and I tried to calculate their success. I did this because a little bit of me wanted to have a table, too.
Back in 2022, I tabled at Gamicon. It was a fine show. I think I made back my table, but that’s not the part I remember. What I remember is sitting in a corner of the event hall, twiddling my thumbs, and watching my friends have a blast playing board games. I didn’t make a tremendous amount of money, though I spent quite a bit getting to the convention. It left a sour taste since. A taste sour and lasting enough that I promised myself I wouldn’t table at this particular event again.
Why was I staring down artist alley so hard, then? I knew my experience, and I had the sales records to back it up. It seemed unreasonable to be thinking I’d enjoy having an artist table this year. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t salivating and losing sleep over it. The urge was just nagging in the back of my head.
The nagging I like to say comes from the negative side of the creator mindset. It’s an overwhelming force that produces itself when everything in life becomes an opportunity to get my work out there, a chance to move a few pieces, a possibility to make a buck. The negative side of a creator mindset truly develops when everyday life opportunities turn into “ought” statements in my head. Instead of thinking, “I could fit in at this event and find success,” I start thinking, “I ought to be at this event, I ought to be moving my art.” When something begins to present itself as something I ought to do, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
These ought thoughts show up with hobbies, too. “I stream artwork on Twitch, I ought to stream all my gaming, too,” creeps out of the dark recesses of my mind. I’m doing something fun with friends and, “we ought to record this for content,” pesters me when I’m having a great time. This overwhelming, and often negative, side to creativity can quickly overrun hobbies until everything I do is work.
We deserve more than work — I deserve more than work. To quote the great Ed Wynn, “Life is for the living.” We need to have experiences that are all our own, or experiences shared intimately with a few. We should be able to walk into a room filled with things we relate to and not feel the need to become those things. We should be able to take risks and explore the world without having to focus on marketing, branding, and the almighty dollar. In fact, we should be willing to doubt the might of that dollar when it comes to who we are.
If I’m going to be a good writer or a good artist, I need to live. I need to feel new things. I need to have experiences. Sometimes, I need to play board games with a friend and not focus on the whole artist alley of it all. Sincerity and reality grow from our experiences, and the best art comes from sincerity and realism. It can be argued that genuineness thrives in the dark, but I know that humanity thrives through living.
This whole newsletter might sound like a lecture. I don’t want you to feel that way. The only person I am lecturing is me. But, in Fighting the Good Fight, the overall goal is to impart some wisdom from my journey, and the journeys of others, for you to use on yours. I want us all to remember that we don’t need to monetize every little thing we do. I want us to know that sometimes, an opportunity to be our brand is better spent as an opportunity to be with people we love doing some of our favorite things. I’m grateful that the overwhelming creator mindset didn’t actually overwhelm me this weekend. I had a blast. Sure, I had to push back thoughts of vendor tables, but they never won. I won.
We are not machines that can only make money.