The Pain of Creation
I just came across statement from an episode of Chihaya Furu while I was able to finally send out an MR for a new feature. This feature took almost a week for me to study, lay out the design , code and finally test. Creating something is hard however small it might look from outside or after you are done. In the recent Re:view episode on Who framed Roger Rabbit, both Rich and Jay talk about the magnificent behind the scenes of this marvelous movie. Shooting human characters and then adding animation to make the toons interact with the humans is something we have seen before but that movie is a technical achievement of its time. Jay talks about the painstakingly hard task of bringing the movie to life. Which brings back our original argument that Creation is painful. I have dismissed hundreds of movies and youtube videos for being dumb without even an iota of common sense. But I have changed my behavior from last year. I have come to appreciate the hardship of starting something and then continuing the same. Be it podcast or amateur filmmaking , starting something is always hard. Watching reels or endless videos on facebook is so simple yet unsatisfactory. You are never satisfied watching something that someone else created. But then you start something of your own , you immediately feel grounded and humbled and most of the times you just quit to avoid getting stuck.
I think human life doesn’t have a meaning of its own. I mean evolution doesn’t have any goal in mind other than to survive. But we should always strive to create meaning and meaning is achieved by act of creation even carrying a new human life itself is a literal act of creation. We must create something. Anything. Anything that brings some meaning. Sure it won’t mean anything in beginning. Heck you will feel that you are just wasting your time. I mean I made chicken curry for the first time , I swear I just wanted to run to an Indian restaurant and get a trunk full of chicken just to take away the bad taste. However now I feel much more confident. Confident enough to serve to others and cater to their tastes.
How to navigate through initial pain of creation until the time you get very good. Perseverance I guess. “Doing the hard work” until the day everybody thinks you are an “overnight celebrity”.
