Creating for the sake of creating

When I grew up, I was a huge fan of LEGO (still am). I had a gigantic plastic container underneath my bed, almost the width and length of my bed, filled with all kinds of pieces from all the different sets I’d gotten. It was all kinds of pieces, not just one single theme like Star Wars, but everything from classic colorful sets to pirates and knights.

And one of my favorite things to do was to just pull out that big box from underneath my bed, and start building things. I always had this huge ship that I was working on, with multiple engines and wings, and all the weapons and canons that I had in my arsenal. But it never lasted more than a week or two, before I smashed it in the ground in some epic fight with the Sith. Then I’d build a completely new ship, all with it’s own little story.

As I grew older and went up in the higher ages in school, I lost touch with that part of me that just loves building with lego. And that really is just a natural part of growing up and finding and creating new parts of yourself together with your friends. You go out and try to discover who you are in the big wide world together with the people you are happy to call friends, thinking you have to leave behind who you are when in reality, you never really change.

After years of staying untouched underneath my bed, I decided to gift it to my neighbor, who was this much younger kid who himself loved LEGO. And I don’t miss that particular LEGO at all, because it felt right to move on from it and be able to give someone else the opportunity to create their own memories with it.

And that wasn’t the thing that made me loose touch of that part of me, that part that just loves creating things for the sake of creating them. That happened years before, and again, a piece of it was a natural part of growing up. But what I later learned, is a part of life is finding your way back to the parts that you’ve had with you since you were a kid. Getting back to your roots, if you will.

I learned that, it’s not the building with LEGO itself that is a part of you, but creating things out of other things. And doing it for the sake of creating itself. Now don’t get me wrong, I still build LEGO, and have purchased new sets since I grew up and will never stop building. Because, frankly, LEGO is awesome. But, what I found in this realization, is that there was this natural inclination and drive in me, to simply create things, and a sincere love for esthetics and design.

And as I look over the last 29 years of life that I’ve been lucky enough to live through, I can see a very clear correlation between my own happiness from what I’ve been doing, and it being building things for the sake of building them. Much like LEGO was the medium I used to use to create new things with, programming and design has become the new medium that I use to create with.

The important thing for me, has been to be able to separate work, from creating, from a purpose perspective. The reason, that is, for what I do it. Because work, is doing something for someone else, in exchange for something in return. Using the skills you have in order to create value that the other person doesn’t know how to do themselves.

Whereas creating for the sake of creating, is just for you and you alone. There is no transaction, there are no demands or requirements, no timeline or deadline, no expectations. Just, the process of creating things. That’s what I loved about YouTube, Dribbble, Instagram… in the beginning it was all about the creations that we were able to make, and sharing them with each other.

This is exactly what I’m working my way back to. I love programming, I love design, I love making videos and photography. It all began way back with the love of creating things. And that’s what I want all of this to be about. Not to make a shit ton of money and build a huge business. If I’m able to build a business out of it all, that would be fantastic. But I’m deeply focused on never loosing sight of the true purpose of it all, the purpose I lost back when I finally quit Instagram after years of working on the posts I had shared. The purpose I have carried with me since I was a kid, building LEGO in my old room.

Creating for the sake of creating itself.