I think I’m finally a creative again
I tried to land the lucrative creative job twice, on purpose, and missed both times. The one that finally worked is the one I wasn't chasing for the money at all.
When I first started college, I wanted to be a programmer. Not the “casually hacking like I was in the movie Hackers”, either. I had the whole thing storyboarded out, the one where I commute into San Francisco for some big tech company or a hot startup and make a frankly ridiculous amount of money. The 90s were absolutely stuffed with magazines and commercials glorifying that exact guy, and I was sure, so very sure, I was gonna be him.
Programming turned out to be way harder than I bargained for, at least for me. I could not get anything to work past simple text prompts, and since I was bad at math then (and, full disclosure, remain bad at math now), all the deeper concepts just sailed right over my head and waved on the way by. After two wasted semesters and many a serving of cafeteria cheese fries (no regrets, baby!), I switched to something way more my speed: multimedia.
I already loved to draw, so the digital version of creativity was right up my alley, and I went in deep. Graphics, video editing, audio production, illustration, web design. I ate all of it up. And if I can say so without my head swelling too much, I got pretty good.
But, pride comes before the crash.
“Pretty good,” meet everybody else
Naturally I figured, “hey, multimedia, I’ll get a job easily.” Then I met the job market.
Turns out the thing about being pretty good at something is that a whole lot of other people are also pretty good at it (surprise, surprise), a fair number are flat-out better (way better), and every last one of you is fighting over the same handful of jobs. As good as I thought I was, I was one face in a very big crowd, and the outcome I’d been dreaming about did not show up.
So I did what you do when you gots to eat. I went and found a job.
The college I’d graduated from needed help in the computer lab, and I needed income, so I took a gig as a lab technician. Figured it was a stopgap. Welp. Little did I know that one little decision was about to march me down a years-long road through IT that I never once planned on. College lab, then a computer repair shop, then tech support at a middle school, then a promotion into a school district’s IT department, then two more districts, plus a stint right before the pandemic (there were even a couple years of STEM/STEAM curriculum planning crammed in there somewhere, but that’s a story for another day).
The different kind of creative
By the end of all that, I was burned out. Crispy.
I did a little educational admin work to catch my breath, and here’s where I learned something I didn’t have words for at the time. You can technically be “creative” in a job like that. You find a slick new way to reformat a spreadsheet, or you talk your way around a department problem, and sure, that’s a kind of creative. But it’s not the fun kind. At least for me, anyhoo.
There’s a real difference between work that uses your creativity and work that actually feeds it, and you don’t fully feel that difference until you’ve spent a few years on the wrong side of it. I had. My brain was starving for the other kind, the kind that gives something back.
So I started feeling my way toward it. Some freelance video work. A little social media passion project I’ll tell you about another time. But it was clear my brain wanted a brand new outlet, not an old one dusted off and plugged back in.
That’s around when I stumbled onto two things that clicked the whole season into place.
The two things
First was AI.
I won’t get too in the weeds here, because I’m not looking to start a debate, and however you feel about it, I respect it. For my purposes, it turned out to be a great assistive tool for pretty much anything creative. Is it any good at creating things itself? Nope, and that’s a job I’ll never hand it. But as an assistant? For what I need, it works great.
(Quick aside, while I’m here. AI makes coding so much easier now, and part of me does wish it had existed back when I was flunking out of programming. Although, let’s be real with ourselves. I almost certainly would’ve let it do all my hard programming work for me, which in my case was, hrmm, all of my programming work. So I’d have learned absolutely nothing and called it a degree. C’est la vie.)
The second thing was the big one. Writing.
In some ways I’d always been into writing without ever clocking it as a thing I did. I even kept up a serious Yelp review streak for a couple years, which I’m now choosing to count as relevant experience. But doing it professionally? Never crossed my mind. Then I looked up and realized that between ghostwriting, newsletters, and educational email courses, writing had quietly become more fun than it’s ever been. Lucrative, too.
And here’s the part that gets me. I spent years chasing the lucrative creative job on purpose, twice, and missed it both times. The one that finally worked is the one I wasn’t chasing for the money at all. I just liked doing it.
I feel like a creative again
Now here I am, constantly noodling on how the latest update to whatever AI tool I’m using can make my workflow more efficient. Not do the writing for me. Just help me have a good time figuring out the work. After everything, that’s the part I didn’t expect to get back: the having-a-good-time part.
And don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no regrets about the detours. The programming flop (again, no regrets on the cheese fries), the design grind, even the IT adventure I try not to think about too hard; all of it went into building whoever I am now. I needed every wrong turn to recognize the right one when I finally tripped over it.
But do I ever want to go back to work that doesn’t let me flex the creative muscles? To the spreadsheet kind of clever, the kind that leaves you empty? Not a chance. I went the long way around to figure out the difference, and now that I know it, I’m not unknowing it.
I’m having way too much fun over here. Best believe though peeps, I’m planning to keep it that way.
Did you enjoy this article? If so, please consider sharing this and leaving a comment below, to share your thoughts on your creative journey. Hope to hear from you!