Art is not the same as creativity

I finally start to understand how everyone can be creative, but not everyone should be an artist

I always considered myself creative, until I became an “artist”.

Let me explain. It’s not that I stopped having interesting thoughts, or that I no longer could come up with anything original, it’s just that once it was my full-time job, the bar for creative standards suddenly got raised, the stakes got higher, and the pressure was on. The jump from expert-hobby-level to professional was a lot bigger than I’d thought. After all, “artists” create masterpieces consistently, don’t they?

When you’re working in an office surrounded by lots of other people busily trying to swat away emails and nail their productivity targets, creativity gets shoved to the side more often than not, and the emphasis is on doing and completing. The times you’re expected to come up with new and original ideas are few and far between, even in creative fields such as publishing or graphic design. So, when you do, it’s unexpected and a pleasant surprise.

Often it’s also left to those in the higher echelons of manageme…