Limitations might be the key to creativity.

I’ve been trying to write my first blog post for this website, chronicling the abroad semester I recently finished, but I can’t get myself to finish it. There’s too much to add, too many details to leave out, too many passages I want to reword. And worst of all: nothing is stopping me from continuing like this.

I’ve always been a creative person; I’ve drawn, I’ve made music, I’ve coded. But there used to be some kind of limitation in all of this. Back when I drew, I did so with the limited pencils I had. When I made music, I was bound by the amount of samples and synthesisers I had installed as well as the sheer (lack of) computing power my computer had. When I started programming, all I knew was Java and Swing, so all my programs were written using those.

Nowadays it feels as if these boundaries are gone. I have all the pens and pencils I could need for drawing, more empty notebooks than I could hope to fill, I even have a tablet I could use to draw digitally. Earning my own money allowed me to buy a PC that’s more than sufficiently powerful for all kinds of projects, plus I was finally able to buy a legitimate copy of FL Studio – genuinely one of my first purchases after starting to earn a salary. In programming, I am far less limited than I was before because I’ve learned coding to a point where I can transfer my skills quickly to most other languages and frameworks. I’ve already dabbled in apps, web programming, games, desktop frameworks, microcontrollers…

I feel this vast array of options makes me freeze up. It’s not too dissimilar from how streaming services offer such a vast library that even choosing something to watch is an overwhelming task. Except that this is creative production, not consumption, it’s what I derive a lot of my personal meaning and worth from. I feel like there’s so much I should do, so much I could do, but I just… don’t.

Another reason for this might be growing perfectionism. I know I’ve done decently in the past, so logically I should do better now, right? This lingers in the back of my mind all the time; especially when I think about my music. For example, I’m extremely proud that I wrote an entire short album, I even own it on vinyl. But my head tells me that the next album should be longer, deeper, more meaningful, better than the last one. It’s a big task to tackle – perhaps too big.

How could I solve this? I’m unsure. Something that comes to mind is trying to go back to ‘the basics’. This feels difficult because with my somewhat long experience in these creative fields, it feels as if I should be able to create more than just ‘basic’ art.

This reminds me of a YouTube channel I found recently. Garbaj talks about related struggles; trying to be creative but feeling too frustrated or overwhelmed to do anything. They mentioned how one could try to make smaller creative projects, just to get out of the cycle of never finishing anything.

And I did, finally.

In a spare moment at university today, I grabbed a random piece of paper lying on the table, I took one of the ballpoint pens there, and I drew this anime girl’s head.

It’s not much. I’m not claiming this to be much. It’s just a small drawing. But I finished it, and I genuinely felt happy after finishing this. I felt like showing this to people because I was so proud of my small accomplishment.

Maybe it’s important to step away from your big projects every now and then to do something small, something that can be finished easily. It can be as simple as this five-minute drawing.

It can also serve as a physical reminder of how far you’ve come in your creative endeavours. Looking back at the drawings I attempted to create a year or two back, I was not nearly as happy about those as I am about this. In studying 3D character modelling, I learned a lot about human figures, how they’re shaped and what to keep in mind, and quite a bit of this is reflected here. I can start delving into perspective, and different styles. I’m very far away from perfection, don’t get me wrong! But I’ve improved, and that’s all that matters to me.