de-commodifying creativity
This something that I have been unwinding out of my system - this underlying feeling that doing anything creative needs to be monetized.
Don't get me wrong. This is a great time in the world for artists to have these different outlets online to actual make money with their art. Given, there has been some ups and downs with those outlets in recent times. There was great upheaval at one time with artists when IG changed the algorithm. Etsy was once a place where you could find hand-made, artist created products. Now it's inundated with drop shipped products from China and AI generated art. Pinterest used to be one of my favorite places for images and see artists' work, and now it's mostly ads and AI generated art. And those are just three platforms. I'm sure there have been changes in other places where artists used to share their work.
But that's not REALLY what I want to talk about. There's always been talk about "turning your hobbies into a business", especially over the past years where it's technology has made it easier and easier to sell things and services to people all over the globe. This has opened up a lot of opportunities for people.
Over the past years I have listened to so many "make money online gurus", watched countless videos of people making "passive income" by turning things they enjoy into products for sale, and felt the ever increasing need to "monetize", etc, etc...
I recently realized that my brain was wired to think that anything I created must be monetized. Anything and EVERYTHING. Yeah, it sounds like a big leap. To me it doesn't make sense. But here I am. I couldn't do anything "just for fun." Creativity wasn't creativity for creativity's sake. Not anymore.
So that's part of what I am unwinding with this blog. This blog is literally just for fun. And expression. And creativity. And connection might be nice. There's nothing major at stake with this. Especially in this space. I'm not trying to get views. I am not trying trying to get "Likes" on my posts.
Although, me being a week or so in, it's kind of refreshing to see that people actually at least saw my post. And some read it. And some toasted. And some even wrote me an email. It's an entirely different feedback loop, in a different kind of echo system. The attention doesn't translate to dollars. And that is quite freeing.
So that being said, I had fun today messing around with the theme of the blog, making little updates, figuring things out. And these are fun things that I find rewarding. For the sake of the fun of it. For being able to solve a puzzle. For just being able to create, just for the sake of creating.
And now I have created this post.
End of transmission.