Unless you’re extremely lucky, talented or rich, along the path of doing creative work you’ll find yourself doing stuff you won’t be proud of, just for the money. These are works you won’t be dying to show the world, they’re simply projects you do to pay the bills.
Nothing wrong with that. We’ve all been there, done that.
But.
You still need to do work you can be proud of, even if it doesn’t pay, even if it nobody else sees it. You need to do them because if you don’t, your creative monster will die.
Before I started 21 Dragons, I ran a blog called Life Coaches Blog. These two blogs couldn’t be more different. Life Coaches Blog was my attempt at running a pro-blog (professional blog), and the idea was the more traffic I could attract, the more money I could hopefully make off clicks on ads. That led me to focus not on writing the best that I could, but on writing the most attention grabbing posts that I could. A lot of cheesy writing exists in that blog because of that, cheese I remain embarrassed about to this day.
When I got tired of that, I started 21 Dragons. I don’t care much about getting traffic at 21 Dragons, or making money off ads (there aren’t any). Instead, I do my best to craft the best posts I can each time I write. They may not all be gems, but I try to make something I can be proud of each time. It encourages me to keep upping my game when I try to make something good. A difference in perspective, but it makes all the difference.
There is nothing that kills your creative monster more than not giving a fuck about the art you create. Nothing. And you go down that road by not having pride in your work. If you can’t make stuff you can be proud of at work, do it at home. Do it somewhere, because your creative monster needs somewhere to unleash itself. And it’ll thank you for it.
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