Creativity as rebellion: make something no one asked for

Field Note  ·  Creativity

“In a world that wants to categorise you, the act of making something no one asked for is the most honest thing you can do.”

There is a particular discomfort that comes with making something with no audience in mind. Literally, not taking pictures for Instagram, not polishing sentences for your blog post, not performing a joke because you want to impress someone. Just making something for yourself. It could be a page in a diary that no one will read, a drawing that exists because you wanted it to happen, or simply a bedroom rearranged because something about it felt wrong to you and you wanted to fix it. This almost feels wasteful. Shouldn't you be doing something more useful with your time? If you notice that slight guilt for indulging yourself, it's one of the most revealing things about how thoroughly we've internalised the idea that our outputs only count when someone else measures them. And that belief shapes what we make, and, more importantly, everything we don't.

Sartre argued that existence precedes essence. The idea is that you are not born with a fixed nature that you then discover and express. Instead, you make yourself through choices. Your identity is not something to be found, but constructed, moment by moment, day by day, year by year, through what you decide to do. Which means the question of what you make, and why, and for whom, is not a small question. It is THE question. Because if you don't actively create yourself, something else will. Maybe the expectations you grew up with, social or cultural norms, the job market, or an algorithm telling you what you should think is worth wanting. The world is so efficient at filling the space of an unconstructed self. Honestly, it’s also an easy path, because you never have to do the harder work of figuring out what actually matters to you; just follow the path given.

The daily sketchbook as a radical act

But there's another way. Whatever exists inside you, no matter how big or small, an observation, a feeling, an idea, maybe just an aesthetic response to something you passed on a walk, you can make it real. You can always carry your own sketchbook. And the sketchbook is a loose metaphor. It doesn't have to involve drawing, not even a journal, a poem or anything creative for that matter. You could just build a small prototype or grow tomatoes just because you wanted to know if you could. The medium doesn’t matter as much as the act itself: you take something that only existed inside you and give it a form in the world. Our world is designed to make you a consumer of content, of opinions, of identities, so the act of making something is a refusal to be a surface on which someone else's content lives.

What self-actualisation actually means

Maslow put self-actualisation at the top of his hierarchy, which makes it sound like a finish line. Something you reach after you've sorted out safety, belonging, and self-esteem. But the existentialists had a different view. For them, self-actualisation isn't a destination, but a daily practice. It's what happens when you repeatedly choose to act from your own values and perceptions rather than borrowed ones. The sketchbook isn't evidence of self-actualisation, but the act of regularly opening it is the self-actualisation. Which means there might not be any destination, but a fresh canvas to discover what you want to sketch.

The lab experiment

Make something this week with no audience in mind. Something that expresses a specific thing you noticed or felt. Put it somewhere only you can see it.