The Difficulty of Being Creative for a Living

March 2, 2009 • 3:04 pm • POSTED BY Adam Flanagan

My relatives think I have a pretty cool job. I get to wear jeans and t-shirts to work. I get to be creative all day. Occasionally I get to travel to cool places, and do ridiculously fun things like trend research (a.k.a. checking out cool stores). On a fairly regular basis I get to eat at amazing restaurants, some of which I helped with the design and marketing. To top all that off, I get to drink free beer on Fridays from 4:00 – 6:00, with the best coworkers a person could ask for, life is pretty damn good.

However, there are those days where being creative for a living feels like self-inflicted torture. Don’t get me wrong, the days where the ideas are flowing, the pen on paper (or cursor on screen) comes easy, and all the work looks amazing, are the best days ever. Then there are the days where it just doesn’t click,  you become full of doubt about what you do for a living, and you start wondering if Barnes & Noble is hiring. Those days I ask what the hell I got myself into by going to art school.

Yeah, sometimes being creative for a living is hell on the old self-esteem. Especially if you bill by the hour, there’s even more pressure to achieve creativity and originality in a timely manner. I found this recent talk from the TED2009 Conference to be really inspiring, especially if you feel you’ve hit that wall. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talks about the emotional pressure of being creative on a regular basis. It’s really inspiring, and aleviates some of that pressure to constantly create the next best thing.