“When are you going to get a real job?”
“You can always do this as a hobby.”
“How long do you plan to do this?”
“You do know the odds of success, I hope?”
“You need to put the people in your life, first.”
And my favorite— “You’d better wake up Mister Man!”
And on and on . . . Hey, I didn’t choose this life—it chose me!
The Setup
As a creative, if you take it seriously, you will meet resistance around every corner, by family, friends and lovers. How could such a seemingly responsible person upend his/her life to do something frivolous—at age 27, in my case, to play in a rock band? My talent was undeveloped, but promising. I believed in myself. Still the naysayers probably thought, “What a waste!”
In my case, I was married to a beautiful wife for five years who always supported my musical journey in bands, until she didn’t. My chosen profession was working for the State as a wildlife biologist. While I loved the job—here’s where I paraphrase a quote from Sting— “I knew what I would be doing next year, the following year and the year after that.” I was 27 and apparently, restless as hell. I was already on borrowed time to become the “overnight success.”
But even though I left a solid job after spending six years at a university to get the degrees to be legit, it was still a pragmatic decision with the wife’s input. This is not the time or place to go into my next move, so I’ll just say my wife was a J. Cave Buckner fan from the start but not being the creative I am and a poor communicator with some dysfunctional family baggage, within two years, she moved on to someone . . . ahem . . . less ambitious. I am, after all, a true creative. A Virgo creative, and true creatives come with a serious resolve the non-creatives don’t understand. And never will.
Such is my intro to “Two Types of People.”
“If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it would be complexity" - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The psychology of a creative
I was not interested in psychology until I started writing fiction and needed to build character profiles. It’s interesting the ex-wife subscribed to Psychology Today when we were married, but maybe she was trying to understand her dysfunctional family dynamics. Nice family. But dysfunctional. I couldn’t read all the nuance and behaviors that go with that.
I recently got a copy of Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian American psychologist. I know, it’s a mouthful. It’s pronounced MEE-high Chick-sent-me-high-ee.
Finally—after all these years, maybe I can unpack the reasons I am the way I am, and why you may be the way you are, considering you have struggled (or will struggle) with your choices in relationships and life in general.
More importantly, it helps to know how to understand the other group, the non-creatives and the need of them understanding us. I will refer to psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “Mr. C.,” with apologies in advance.
In general, we are complex
Chapter 3 is all about the creative personality. Mr. C says, “If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it would be complexity. By this I mean that they show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes—instead of being an “individual,” each of them is a “multitude.” Like the color white that includes all the hues in the spectrum, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves.”
If that doesn’t make you, Mr./Ms. Creative, feel special, I don’t know what will. Mr. C says psychologist Jung calls this a “mature personality.”
I would go further, beyond the “human possibilities” and argue it affects the way I approach individual projects by reaching outside the boundaries of the core project, to the 360-degree fuzzy fringes to leave no stone unturned when it comes to drawing interesting associations between seemingly unrelated events. What follows is hard editing—pulling back in, like a turtle in his shell to focus on the core topic and its significance to an audience.
Anal or due diligence? I prefer the latter, the rabbit hole of discovery approach, even though it takes more time. It is in this type of project execution where the diamonds are found.
Mr. C has broken the creative’s interesting personality down to 10 observations, but we’ll explore three in Part One.
“Divergent thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one—and this selectivity involves convergent thinking.” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creatives burn like a hot furnace, but we have a good thermostat
“Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. This suggests a superior physical endowment, a genetic advantage.”
He notes that creatives rest and sleep a lot. The point is our energy output is under our control. We have an internal governor, and we use it. In reality, project or journalism deadlines don’t pay attention to that governor, and we are subject to burnout like anyone else. I’m thinking about the K-12 teaching profession, or emergency first responders.
“When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when it is not, they immediately start recharging their batteries. They consider the rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection very important for the success of their work.”
Mr. C is careful to say that this “burn-hot and rest” cycle is not biorhythm or genetically related. “They consider the rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection very important for the success of their work.”
We’re smart puppies, but naive (hence the puppy designation)
He says, “a core of general intelligence—is high among people who make important creative contributions. But being intellectually brilliant can also be detrimental to creativity. Some people with high IQs get complacent, and, secure in their mental superiority, they lose the curiosity essential to achieving anything new.”
I say that’s why it is important to be curious and foster “play,” such as rolling a foreign object around in your hand, using your fingers to turn over every facet, all the while trying to ask questions to pose a narrative of the object’s significance, it’s meaning and geographical existence. That’s known as “divergent thinking.”
Mr. C elaborates. “Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas.
But we are also good with “convergent thinking.” This refers to the turtle’s head retreating back into his shell, and it’s an important part of the process. “Divergent thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one—and this selectivity involves convergent thinking.”
Does this mean that creatives are better editors? I would say “yes.” Intuition plays a part in convergent thinking, which may sound nebulous, but—and here’s the fun part— “when you know, you know.” While probably not 100 percent correct, depending on experience, it’s fun to know we have an edge when it comes to ranking ideas with their respective value.
Now, I am no genius—just a humble creative who happens to be a jack of all trades and master of none. But now that I see my creative process has been identified as convergent and divergent thinking, I can say it is a totally intuitive process that I probably share with many other super creatives.
In “Two Types of People: Part Two,” we’ll continue with more creative traits identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This next set of traits is probably responsible for any success I’ve had living a creative life. I look forward to sharing projects I failed to get into the hands of Americans in national markets; but this doesn’t mean they lacked value—far from it. Timing and luck often determine success. If you stay in the creative realm long enough, you will have your share of failures as well. I had a blast developing them into prototypes and met many other creatives in the process.
If anyone asks, “What’s wrong with you?”
Reply, “Not a thing—I’m just creatively marinating . . . .”