People have all kind of weird impulses. Some are constructive, some are self destructive, and some are just plain entertaining. But what drives me to write?
I think there are couple of layers here. Let's take a look at each one and see if we can make any sense out of it.
Part of the drive is a need to accomplish something. Consumption largely leaves me feeling empty. While I enjoy reading a good book or watching a good movie if I spend too much of my time enjoying other people's creations and not making anything myself I start to feel unbalanced. Even if it is not something significant to anyone else the act of creation lets me feel a sense of accomplishment. Even if the thing created is not really worth of a sense of accomplishment.
Part of the drive is a desire to share and interact. While I enjoy a well written post or a elegant and profound thought sharing it with other people makes it better. I think this is composed of a need to perform and a need to receive validation from others. If other people think my thoughts are interesting then I'm not wasting my time thinking them. If some people find it interesting and others boring it is easy to separate them into groups of people who get it and people who don't get it. There is also definitely a thrill when my thoughts open someone else up to a different perspective or help them reconcile conflicting thoughts in their head.
I think the dominant part is the need to create. I rarely get a sense of creation accomplishment from my job. While the last year and a half has allowed me to create something pretty intense I don't derive a huge sense of satisfaction from it. The things I make are not stand alone. They exist inside a system that I have a very small impact on. I can occasionally point to a screen and say "That is mine" or an intense algorithm and say "That is mine". But ultimately my work will be rewritten and overwritten by others. A large portion of my time will be spent fixing bugs other people (and of course my own) introduced to the system.
I'm better at fixing bugs than creating. Writing up portions of a system from scratch is not my strong suit. Historically I haven't found it very interesting or engaging work. I doubt that will change as long as I am working on financial software. Most of the problems just aren't that interesting to solve.
So what is a person to do? Human beings (at least me) have an innate desire to create something. We want to see our impact on the world. I think we see this in our desire to have children and to raise them. We want to send something out into the world that we have had a hand in.
My strongest creative desires is in games. I love games. I want to create games not to make money but to payback the people who made games when I was a kid. I think back to the passion I had for a lot of games I played as a kid and I want to pass that on to the next generation.
Games that are fun. Games that are complicated. Games that are sometimes a wonderful vehicle to tell a stirring story.
Another creative desire I have (not quite as strong as my desire to make games) is for writing. I have always been a voracious reader. As I aged I have been able to see more and more of the soul writers have poured into the books I have loved. Again, I want to be able to do for others (specifically I'm thinking of nerdy young guys) what has been done for me. I want to give the joy and passion a good story brings to my fellow men and women.
I hope to get a significant portion of work done on a novel this year. I'd like to move from thinking about this idea for a great story and give it life. But I also want to write in a freer form and that is what this blog is about. When I see (or think) of something beautiful I want to create a record of it for history and to share it with others. Come on people let's all share something beautiful.
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