On Creativity and Human Connection

  In the modern day of automation and AI, creativity today is more important now than it ever was, and I believe everyone should spend time making something.

My Mom introduced me to OK GO when I was little, and I was captivated by their music video “Here It Goes Again”, and a year later, when they released a music video for their song “This Too Shall Pass” with a giant Rube Goldberg machine spanning the length of a big warehouse room, I was captivated.

To clarify, a Rube Goldberg machine is a chain reaction contraption made of a bunch of unrelated devices to complete a usually simple task, and something about this idea I just loved. I loved the idea so much that I got a little marble run course that would attach to the wall and tried to build my own. I used dominos, toy cars, and little robotic hex bugs, just to name a few.

It got me to think about how I could make different elements interact, such as the little bug pushing the marble to hit the dominoes over. It definitely wasn’t as big or impressive as theirs was, but I thought it was charming, and in a sense, it was perfect just the way it was. This wasn’t the only creative activity I did, I liked to write made-up stories, and like most kids, I liked to draw and create. I drew crazy robots with lots of moving parts, big disaster scenes with a bunch of little stick figures everywhere reacting to it, I built big super mansions in Minecraft, and made whatever else was on my mind.

In most of these, there was an element of inspiration and learning from another person, the stick figures in a large scene were inspired by a friend doing the same sort of doodles in class, the marble machines were inspired by the video, but the robots I’d like to claim were from my own mind.

I certainly didn’t draw the best back then, and I’m no expert now, but I’ve taken on plenty of different creative projects in the past few years that I’d like to talk about. I got interested in game development and production around 2021 and started work on a now assumedly cancelled visual novel game in the form of production and directing.

In the two-year time span of this project, I started to pick up a lot of different mediums because I wanted to do more than I was doing. I picked up concept art and did some of that, which led to me doing concept art for the Team Fortress 2 workshop and having some hats published online in collaboration with other artists. I led a zine for charity based around playing games, raising money for Child’s Play Charity, and started a small business using previous production and management skills I had learned.

I got into level design and blocked out a few different ideas for fan levels for games I enjoy, which helped get me more into writing and helped me flesh out the concepts I created. Sometime during this, I got back into Lego, which was very similar to what I was already doing, and picked up BrickLink Studio to create purely for fun and see what I could make. Most recently, while continuing these, I’ve picked up journalism with a focus on writing and esports photography, having attended DreamHack Dallas and the BLASTtv Austin Major to pursue these interests, and meeting a lot of great people in the industry as well as players during the events.

The important thing I did during all of this was that I talked about it and shared it, whether to friends, family, or by throwing it into the void of the internet. I got enjoyment from what I made, and I hoped showing it to other people would give them joy or inspire them to create something to bring them their own joy. I’ve met a lot of incredible and inspirational people on my journey and got great advice on what I can do to make my own things better.

The point I’m trying to make from writing this and speaking about it is that creating things for yourself feels really good, and it gives you a lot of opportunity to express yourself and meet people with similar interests. It helps keep your mind sharp and makes you think, and you can create in an infinite number of ways. Create something to show off and be proud of, it’s good for the soul.