creative jobs
I saw one of those subway takes tiktoks the other day where a comedian was saying that every job is a creative job. It got me thinking, because if you’ve talked to me for more than ten minutes in the last year and a half, you probably heard me complain about my job and how I feel like it isn’t really…scratching the itch? that I always thought my professional life would. And I think part of it is the lack of creativity. That’s partly what motivated this blog (other reasons include fear of the passage of time, fear of losing touch with my friends, fear of losing every semblance of critical thinking and coherent communication abilities - essentially just lots of fear). But when I give it some more thought, and when I see some of my coworkers in action, I see that this job actually has a lot of creativity in the literal sense. We are quite literally creating documents - words on a page, yes, but so too are blogs and books and screenplays just words on a page. We are taking ideas, concepts, mental images and hand waving, and turning them into something concrete that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Isn’t that creation?
But I empathize with subway man’s initial gut reaction to the comedian’s take - that no, not all jobs are creative. So maybe we mean something different when we think of creativity. It feels like we are conflating creation with…artistry, or emotion, or opinion. We don’t think of making decks or formulating excels as “creative” because we are really just acting as scribes for someone else’s ideas. But even then, a lot of people probably wouldn’t consider the Goldman managing director’s idea to make the deck as creative either. So maybe we’re missing something on the receiving end, and “creative” works are defined by the reactions of their audience. But this feels like a move in the wrong direction - despite the existence of an often absurd and arbitrary marketplace for art (hello, white canvases sold for $20.5m (shhh i know these are art and hang in museums and are studied and blah blah blah)), I’d maintain that the existence of creativity cannot be extrinsic to the creation, to the creative process. So then, my question: if the keyboard monkey billing her 100th hour in a week derives immense creative satisfaction from writing and re-writing the reps in a merger agreement, does that make her job a creative one? If yes, and creativity is in the eye of the creator, then why is it that people in these bland white collar jobs so often feel creatively unfulfilled, yet very few artists feel that way about their work? Have we all just deemed certain fields as “creative” while actually using the word as a proxy for…insert whatever you want: artistry, craftsmanship, tangibility, independent thought, lack of health insurance, piercings and tattoos, tabis and asymmetrical tops and comically wide culottes flapping in the wind?
Anyway, as usual - no answers here, sorry. But unfortunately for my career trajectory, education, and bank account, I am not evolved enough to see my job, when done by me, as creative. I can see how it could be for some, but I don’t, to borrow the song from Love Actually, feel it in my fingers or feel it in my toes.