How writing a football column saved my creativity….(or art revisited)

I’ve always been very critical of music. Maybe it’s because my whole life I’ve been so invested in it. For whatever reason criticism is the knee jerk reaction to any music you listen to. Is it good? Is it bad? What will my friends say if I like it and they don’t?

Go on any message board, Facebook page, Twitter feed, you’ll see people being critics towards everything. They have their opinion and by golly their opinion is the gospel truth.

I used to think this way as well but over the past year something happened. I started creating more intently and a lot of what I created was rejected or dismissed. It wasn’t so much that people didn’t like it, but that people rejected it without thinking about it. So I gave up on writing and essentially started existing. Then a funny thing happened.

I started writing a football column.

It took me writing a football column to get my creative mojo back because I had truly lost my creative functionality and I became a very miserable person. The feedback I received from some people regarding the football column got me excited about creating again. Writing the football blogs and them being appreciated got me thinking that maybe just maybe it was time to get creative again.

I then realized that wasn’t the point. The point is that I was trying to live up to the expectations of critics.

The real idea behind art is for an artist to express what he or she is feeling and to share that feeling with others. That’s hard to do. For an artist to put his work out there to be consumed by the masses is a risk. The risk is that his art will be rejected. Therein lies the problem.

I realized the criticism isn’t just ingrained; it’s a defense mechanism. All people are creative in some way but the problem is most people do not take the risk of sharing their creativity. They themselves are too afraid their art will be criticized so the defense mechanism is to point blame at others and say what’s wrong with their art.

So what’s the solution?

For me, it was to let go of the fear of criticism. I resolved within myself that God created me to be who I am. The creative parts, the bad parts, and the confused hurt parts.  I now feel lucky that I rest comfortably in my creativity. Do other people think it’s good? Some do. Others, not so much and that’s ok. I truly do not care anymore if people don’t like what I create. If I like it and it becomes an expression of how I’m feeling, then it is considered good.

I have finally reached a point in my life where I can truly say, the criticism of  my “art” by others no longer effects my self worth and for me that’s freedom.

How did it happen? Writing a football column. It saved my creativity and the mojo is back and it’s a beautiful thing.