Creativity
27 May 2022
I don't know exactly what it is, but in the last quarter of my life, my creativity has severely dwindled. And I'm a creative person at heart. I don't know whether it's the stress of "becoming an adult", working a semi-traditional nine-to-five job, the lack of exercise that these two things have brought me to, or a general sense of feeling unfulfilled.
I have vivid memories of earlier years in my life when my creative energy was much more active; lately, it feels like it's mostly out of commission. Which is pretty devastating when the desire to create is still present. It's a constant state of conflict with no resolution in my immediate field of view.
I used to make tabletop games with my friend as a kid: the most prominent one in my memory being Dumbfire, a blatant knock-off of Yu-Gi-Oh! Perhaps that's another story in the Dechrissen lore that I'll get into another time. Anyway, another one is Sicachuwama, a board game where you're racing your opponent to the finish where a treasure chest waits for you, by way of drawing random "color cards" that allow you to travel to corresponding nearby "color spaces." Or something like that. And I remember another game I made with my dad when I was really little — a board game made from an empty and upside down cardboard box, with the board drawn on the bottom and special spaces with cut-out sides that acted as trapdoors. When you walked over them, your game piece would (ideally) fall through. Such ambition.
I even wrote two books as a kid. My debut novel was The Derek Cool Book (because I'm pretty cool), followed by Ghost Zone, the tale of some adventurer who encounters ghosts. Spoiler: at one point, the main character gets into a real bind. He falls into a hole. Luckily, he has a rope and a pickaxe, so he's able to escape (somehow).
I still have those books, at least. Most of my old games are lost in the ether.
So what's the main creative energy outlet for me now?
…
I thought about it for 30 seconds, and nothing came to mind. I don't know, but that just seems bad to me. I need to do something about this, or else I'll fall deeper and deeper into this hole of non-creativeness, past the point of no return. And I don't have a rope and a pickaxe to save me.
— Derek Andersen