Being a creative there’s always an underlying tension of hesitancy and resistance to sharing work. Expression is externalizing the internal and that’s a vulnerable position to be in, I’m exposing myself to criticism and judgment. And I think it puts me in a posture of not knowing how to share my work. I don’t really want to do it so I don’t know how to do it, therefore there must not be a way. It’s willful ignorance. There’s obviously a way, it’s not impossible but because I’m hesitant and resistant it closes me off to any possibility and keeps me from using my creativity or ingenuity for the purpose of shipping work.
Maybe it’s an issue of generosity. What if my ideas, thoughts and creativity isn’t even mine to begin with. What if I’m being selfish for not sharing the things I’ve discovered. What if creativity is just discovery.
It’s natural, instinctual to think our ideas come from us. It’s ours, we possess it. But isn’t creativity just what comes from the connection of ideas and experiences. Doesn’t the idea already exist, whether we “come” up with it our not. Famous math equations already existed before someone “came” up with it. And doesn’t anything we could imagine have the capacity to exist. A writing, artwork or music is a composition of words, palettes and notes that given an infinite permutation of combinations, it already exists as a theoretical. And the person that writes, paints or composes the piece is simply discovering its existence?
What if art and creativity is meant to be generous and not sharing it would be selfish?