James - I agree with you that work can be dehumanising. I'm sure my work is less dehumanising than yours, but even so there's plenty of bureaucratic stuff we have to do in the NHS which is frustrating and crappy and a waste of everybody's time. And I don't agree with people who tell you to stop whining and get on with it. I'm sure there are those worse off than ourselves, but if work is dehumanising we bloody well ought to complain about it and try to do something about it, because people ought to be able to live fulfilled lives, not unfulfilled and frustrating ones.
But I think of creativity as an antidote to this process of dehumanisation, and that's why I feel that it's worth doing the creative stuff even if it doesn't earn any money or garner any recognition. I find that it makes me feel good, puts me in touch with myself, and refreshes my sense of the world in which I live, in a way that nothing else does. It rehumanises me. I do think recognition is important - I think that feedback is especially important to your development, even if it's negative feedback - so I think it's essential that we should comment on one another's work and also advocate the stuff that we think is good, because that's how the audience for genuinely new work gets built. But I still think - this is my own experience - that once you're into being creative you'll do it anyway, if you possibly can, because it gives you rewards that you can't get any other way. - Edward --
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