On Becoming an Artist

The last couple years have been a journey of discovery and rediscovery of myself. If you observed my daily life, you'd be safe to conclude I'm someone who kinda looks like a stereotypical software developer — rational, mathematic, and systematic. What you might not see is the artistic, creative, intuitive person behind the engineering discipline.

Having spent years living in the land of logic and systems, I have slowly found myself craving more ways to express my creativity. I've had bursts of it through of the years, but I would say that I haven't allowed myself to be overly artistic or creative of late. My day job is that of a software developer and leader. My evenings are spent with family cleaning, giving baths, reading books, and generally tending to house as a present husband and father. Creative expression hasn't been high on the priority list.

I have never really allowed myself to be fully creative. I've long worked for others and the agency that drives creativity, while respected, hasn't always has a place fully express itself. As an artist, there are times where it's quite counterproductive to have a duty to bring someone else's vision to life. You need the ability to go rogue and receive all the rewards and consequences from realizing your vision. To be clear, I think that if you're on a team, you need to be a great teammate and that means having a shared goal and working towards it. Nothing wrong with building someone else's vision. There are also moments when it's not the time to be on a team, serving someone else's vision. Sometimes you need to take the risk and make what's been percolating in your own mind. You have to give yourself permission to be a visionary, to operate with high agency, and to have a general disregard for other people's opinions.

It also means that at times you have to let the rigour of your discipline dip so you can step into the flow of creativity in the moment. You stay up until 3AM working on that article where the ideas keep flowing. You reschedule a meeting because you need an extra iteration on a design. Sometimes you have to step out of the predictable and create space for fresh ideas. Creativity requires just enough freedom to thrive. Rick Rubin's book The Creative Act does a great job of articulating what is to be an artist.

Another aspect of being an artist is about taking the risk to realize your vision. Regardless of financial potential or business sense, you make the thing. As it would turn out things made from this perspective often turn out better and result in better products/businesses in the long run because it's meets a real need or expresses real thoughts and emotions — yours! Things made just to make money are well and good, but quickly lose their lustre. They are missing something and you can feel it.

This year I'm giving myself permission to be an artist. To chase my vision. To build it and see what happens. Since I've started, I've never been more satisfied.