Script:

I, like many other people in the world, am constantly trying to avoid failure in my life. From school, to work, to board games--I am a perfectionist and a deeply insecure individual whose mentality is either a result or cause of my crippling anxiety and depression. And you know what? This is becoming too normal. 

Do you know how many jobs I work? Three. And that isn't even the most jobs I've worked at the same time. I've swept floors, cleaned vomit, taught basketball, babysat, worked in restaurants, edited papers, anything to feel like I wouldn't have to crawl back to mommy and daddy for financial security. And it is in this security that I find my creative insecurity. I cannot tell you how many times I have picked up and put down the book Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All because it felt like an attack. How many times, I wonder, have I said that “I am just not the creative type,” like Tom Kelley asks? As someone who was successful at being productive and financially secure, I was eager to continue in what I was good at. I was eager to stay within my own bubble and do what I thought I could do to make money. I was terrified to imagine or build upon anything else because I was so so so sure that I would fail and then become a burden on my parents or society.

So I worked. And worked. And worked. 

And the definition of creative confidence, as Tom Kelley put it cleanly in his text, is the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out.

Well, I had many ideas but I lacked courage. So, I decided to do something a little bit different. Instead of putting all of my time and effort into just work or just school; I decided to do it all. I work roughly three jobs at any given time. One is my job I do for money to spend, one is my job that I do because I absolutely love it, and the last one is a job I like but has a professional edge to it. 

How is this creative?

It isn’t really, it is more about finding creativity within the productivity for me. 

The job I love is Senate. I get to do right by other people and be creative in my legislation and meetings. The job I do for money is McAlister’s, which you probably can tell is the background with all of my best friends in it. The job I do for my professional future is acting as a Graduate Teacher of Record at Clemson. This is how I reframed my experience of reality by using creativity in my daily life. It is an inherently optimistic way of looking at what is possible, as Tom Kelley notes. My life is about constant innovation and having empathy towards others and sympathy towards myself. 

For me, creative confidence is about working as hard as possible to be successful in my creative endeavors without losing my edge as an individual. So, I am basically working for the opportunity to be always creative. How can I become productive enough that I never again have to work a job I dislike? How can I follow my curiosities? How can I become confident? I think it takes the work I am putting in now. And, hopefully later, I can be the person to help change this requirement of productivity before creativity.