Recently I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am to exist within the creative industry. While I’m not where I want to be yet, it looks like I’m moving in the right direction. I know this because every so often, I get opportunities to create artistically which makes my heart soar, but it wasn’t always this way.

For a long time, I wondered if the skill I’d spent years cultivating was just an afterthought. Especially now that AI’s around, generating an artwork is a click away from mimicking decades of a starving artist’s devotion to his craft. I’m no saint, I share this convenience and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve thought: “wow, was all that practice useless?”

My head said yes;
my heart said no.

The internal conflict reminded me of a time back in primary school, where I recall one of my teachers flinging my personal comic book across the classroom. It was a classic display of a stereotypical motherly Asian tiger love. She was trying to “fix whatever was wrong with me” so I could get better at math. But even then, I knew not to falter. I wore a smug look on my face as if I didn’t care, but man, did it sting.

During recess, I remember the walk of shame I endured to reclaim my comic book. Every footstep was heavy, and picking it up was a sharp reminder that creativity felt like a curse to society. And yet, there wasn’t anything I’d rather do than visit the colourful corners of my mind. “It can’t be for nothing,” is the thought that’s kept me going.

Years later, by sheer luck and coincidence, I ended up in class an hour early, listening to a Philosophy class by accident. This eventually became a ritual and led me to Jordan Peterson’s lecture footages where he said: “Creativity is just as much of a curse as it is a blessing” and to “Find a way to make money, and practice your craft on the side – else you’ll starve to death.”

“Real,” I thought to myself.

Because the reality is that creativity isn’t a safe path. It’s high-risk. It doesn’t guarantee money or recognition and yet, for people like us, just feels impossible to turn off. But when life demands the best of us, sacrificing our creative habits don’t seem so bad until some days just feel off. Then, we look back one day and wondered when and why we ever stopped in the first place.

I guess also gets easier to shrug it off as a unimportant because “oh look, I have all these other high-priority adult things to do.” I’ve had those moments too, but what’s the point of being an adult if we can’t carry out our inner child’s requests? And lately, I’ve been trying to live life with my 8 year old and 80 year old selves on my mind. Their advice?

Define creativity on your own terms, if not someone else will.

So, I’ve been revisiting past works. Breathing new life into them. And for the first time, in a long time, given my art a home of its own – a new page. It’s been WIP for months now, and I think it’s time to share it. I’m going with the “make it exist first, make it better later” approach. You can call it a soft launch, maybe even the start of a shop – version 2.

Because even if creativity doesn’t always pay the bills, it feeds the soul. And that’s definitely worth building space for.