Creativity in the time of COVID
What is creativity?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines creativity as “the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas”, but what does that really mean? Doesn’t everyone have that ability? If you were to ask me, I’d say yes, but maybe to a variable degree. For instance, I find my Sister is insanely more creative than I am, and I feel that I am more creative than my Dad.
In general, I find creativity to be a peculiar thing. On one hand, it’s completely subjective, but on the other hand, I feel that I can objectively assign a ‘creativity assessment’ to others. When you get down to it, what exactly determines how creative a person is? Well, neuroscientists have identified three distinct networks in the human brain: the Executive Attention network which helps you focus, the Imagination network which allows you to daydream, and the Salience network which lets you link buried thoughts and memories to the world around you. They say that the more active these networks are in communicating with each other, the more creative a person is. Neat!
![[Comic Source: u/gloppy-yogurt]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f7804e9406d66234a63308e/1630989538142-CM9AY6G55WLDAW7S9TGV/shittyCarousel.jpg)
March 2020, a changed world
OK, so that’s all well and good, we have the general idea of what creativity is and what contributes to a person’s creativity, but what happens to your creativity when the entire world gets thrown into upheaval and the ways which we live, work and communicate are all turned on their heads?
By and large, one person’s experience during this pandemic will be different from what another person has gone through. As a creative professional in the tabletop industry, I count myself very fortunate to have only been minimally affected by COVID. I was able to stay busy, and even picked up a few new jobs over the last 18 months. It wasn’t until we rang in 2021 that I started to notice that something was ‘off’. In order to stay productive, graphic designers and other creative professionals are expected to be able to turn their creativity on and off as needed, however this isn’t always the case.
Right up until about January, I was doing well. I could sit down at my desk in the morning and start ‘being creative’, and continue to do so for the rest of the day, more or less. After the New Year however, I was noticing that it took longer for me to ‘get in the groove’. It got to the point where I would sit at my desk and hours would go by with nothing to show for it. I was just ‘passing time’. My motivation was way down, and if I was able to start working on something, it was noticeably harder for me to form a creative thought.
“What would have taken me a couple of hours before the Pandemic was taking me all day, maybe even longer.”
For the next few months, I continued to work this way, constantly having to fight for my creativity. It wasn’t until June, when I expanded my studio and brought on another designer, that my creativity started to inch its way back. Having a peer to collaborate with and banter with was instrumental in bumping up my creativity and productivity. It was clear; I was missing that human interaction and it was affecting me in a bad way.
This comic describes to a tee how I was feeling (and still am to a certain extent) during the last 8 months. [Comic Source: u/gloppy-yogurt]
Reaching out to others
Once I clued into what was going on with me, I started to speak with my colleagues in the industry about it as well. As expected, each one of them had their own story of what they went through and how they coped, and hopefully thrived. Here some of those accounts from other creative professionals in the industry:
Jacqui Davis
Illustrator | jacquidavis.com | TW: @logicfairy
“Whenever lockdown is discussed I always feel a little guilty admitting that for me on the whole, not much changed. I already worked from home, had the desk and the set-up sorted, so at least I wasn’t working in my kitchen. Sure, I couldn’t go out to the YMCA anymore but I could do yoga at home, and my area is great for walks. I couldn’t see friends or family, and had a solo Christmas, but they don’t live locally anyway so I was used to seeing them only every once in a while. In a way I feel grateful and very lucky.“
“After a few months I found a new routine which generally worked to keep me going day-today (For those wondering - meditation, work, yoga and a walk if it’s not raining. I do live in England after all.) “
“What I noticed, however, was that I was ‘just’ plodding on with nothing really to look forward to.”
”With work I’ve had several clients who’ve had to postpone or cancel projects one way or another - for very understandable reasons - but it can be demotivating and worrisome wondering what’s next when communication is sometimes slow. Since I had this extra time I decided to be positive about it - I’ve picked up an old personal project of mine to work on. Before COVID I always put it off feeling ‘work-work’ should come first. But, having that waiting on the sidelines has given more more energy and focus for clients and life in general.”
“So I suppose to sum it up I feel grateful I’ve come through relatively unscathed if not a bit bored. My heart goes out for everyone who has lost something or someone. I hope things get better.”
Joshua Cappel
Graphic Designer
“Not a lot changed on the creative-direction and graphic design side of my job during the COVID restrictions here in Ontario; that entire process was already almost entirely digital. The bigger impact by far has been on game development.”
Tabletop Simulator was necessary to learn and become proficient in for our entire team (and honestly it saved us from real disaster) but I have discovered that while it is pretty obvious which things digital playtesting does less effectively than physical, it's not so obvious which things it does better.”
“Several bottomless bags of digital tokens? Try replicating that in real life! Shuffling cards many times during the course of a game? Shuffling small numbers of cards? Large numbers of cards? Easy digitally, aggravating physically. Randomizing a stack of 75 tokens that need to stay face down during the randomization? Not exactly a breeze in person. Table space? Endless digitally! Setup time? Basically nonexistent digitally. Box size considerations? Ain't no digital box at all! Receiving the physical sample of a game that was developed almost entirely digitally unearthed a lot of these usability pitfalls. It reinforced how important physical testing and development is when creating a physical product. It's an added layer of challenge on top of the already challenging process of making great games.”
Estefania Rodriguez
Game Designer | TW: @estefaniar88
“Before COVID being an artist and designer was very hard at times for me. I suffer from depression and anxiety, but when COVID started everything felt much worse! It was hard to deal with the feeling of complete uncertainty. My mind went into survival mode, and my partner and I threw ourselves into playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons to escape from the world.”
“I didn't want to feel anything other than safety, which was very hard when my friends and family started losing their jobs, and getting sick. Feeling safe seemed impossible but playing games enabled me to do just that.”
“Eventually playing any games was not enough though. I started designing my own games to help me to continue to stay focused on something other than the news. That helped a lot, but eventually that was not enough either, and so we started playing games with our friends over Zoom. Talking with friends helped a lot, but it was very hard to do. Reaching out wasn't always easy, but when I did, or when they did, no one ever regretted it. If there was something I learned from this whole experience is that you shouldn't be afraid to reach out to friends and family whom you trust. We need to lean on each other during these crazy times and remember that we aren't alone.”
Christian Strain
Graphic Designer & Illustrator | FB: The Full 42 Group
“I've been working from home as a freelance artist, graphic designer, game designer since 2013. So when everyone was told they suddenly had to work from home in 2020, I simply shrugged and kept on working. I thought little had changed for me, but after a little while I started noticing something. I was in more meetings, talking to more people, than ever before. Since everyone was now in the same boat as me, I was suddenly part of the same social structure. Instead of people having conversations by the water cooler, they were talking on Zoom, and inviting me.”
“Now, as people are starting to get back to their office environments, I'm finding that 2020 was partly good for my mental health in that, while everyone else had to struggle to cope with less interaction,
“I realized that I had been missing human interaction for years. Since that realization, I've started my own channel on YouTube, a discord server, and have reached out to more people to keep regular contact.”
I now know what an impact more communication can have on us, and I hope to keep those connections and grow more.”
Andrew Bosley
Illustrator | bosleyart.com
“How has the pandemic affected my work and creativity? To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about it. It has clearly disrupted production and logistics in the industry I work in and my ability to interact with creative colleagues through conventions and meetups has been very limited. But thankfully, I’ve been just as busy as ever. I’m still slammed with projects, each requiring varying degrees of creative fuel. I still find scraps of time to illustrate, write, and develop the personal projects of Wits End. And very fortunately, I have not been deeply affected by the ills of the disease itself. I know many people that contracted COVID, including myself, but nobody I know personally has been killed, hospitalized, or permanently harmed by the disease. Physically and creatively, I’ve remained mostly unscathed by the whole thing.”
“The biggest challenge for me has been watching the world fall apart under the weight of the pandemic (and our response to it). This takes its toll on me, artist and all, more than anything else.
We’re more divisive and confrontational than ever. Our sources for unbiased facts are very limited or nonexistent. Stress is way up and mental health is way down. My own extended family has been torn apart by each one of these things, because it's far more important to be right than it is to be kind these days. So, what have I done to deal with this aspect of the pandemic? I’ve focused on my faith, my family, and I’ve kicked social media to the curb. I try to express gratitude to God for what I have and serve others who have less. I try to be positive I try to be there for my wife and kids mentally and emotionally just as much as I am physically (‘cause we’re around each other a lot!). And I try to focus on face-to-face relationships over digital ones. Because, let’s face it…the social media is kind of like a toxic waste dump…and that’s not the best place to make and nurture friends.”
“Ultimately, I’m a human, husband, and a father before I’m an artist, but they’re all really connected. If I’m not mentally, spiritually, physically, and familiarly (is that a word?) healthy, it's hard to be creatively healthy too.”
Kwanchai Moriya
Illustrator
kwanchaimoriya.com | TW: @kwanchaimoriya | IG: /kwanchaimoriya
In addition to dealing with the changing realities of living in a pandemic, Kwanchai’s experience also involved moving back to Chicago shortly after lockdown to care for his ailing father who's leukemia had relapsed. Kwanchai kindly shared what his life was like for the last two years with us.
“It’s weird to talk about the pandemic because I feel that my experience during the last year was more heightened than most. Kind of different, but parallel to others. Right before the U.S. went into lockdown, my dad’s leukemia relapsed, coming back stronger and scarier. Months of intense chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, would give him a slim chance of survival. Because leukemia is a disease of the blood, his chemotherapy would essentially wipe out his immune system, all his white blood cells, making him severely immuno-compromised during a growing pandemic.”
“We decided amongst my siblings, all of us spread out on different coasts, that I was best able to move back to Chicago and care for my dad. And a growing number of state lockdowns and hospital policies meant only one person could effectively do the hundreds of daily things necessary to care for such a vulnerable patient. I gave my wife a big kiss, got on a plane wearing two kinds of masks, and moved back in with my elderly parents for several months. Luckily, he survived the chemo treatments and a last-ditch experimental stem cell treatment put his cancer into remission, and he is continuing to improve to this day. But he nearly died three times, twice in front of me, and once when I was taking a nap. And although he’s doing exceedingly well nine months later, beating a lot of odds, I still feel like I just got off the plane from Chicago and the worst moments of that winter stick like glue in my brain.”
“For me, the pandemic was extra horrifying, because I was caring for a person that was already beaten down by cancer and undergoing treatments that painted a big target on his back. A little extra fluid in his lungs could cause a fatal infection, let alone the covid-19 virus. Each of us, my mom, my dad, and me were on ultra strict quarantine: home delivery of groceries, no public spaces, no visitors. But there were still daily hospital visits, and some necessary trips out that I had to take. I lived in fear every day that I would bring him a particle of this virus that could easily take a man already desperately clinging to life. “
“I saw Covid-19 particles dancing outside every car window and inside every supermarket, constantly calculating odds to keep them safe. The pandemic made my dad’s precarious situation a thousand times worse in so many ways, but mostly because it meant that he had to undergo a lot of his worst stretches alone in a hospital with no visitors.”
“The most “pandemic” moment occurred just before my dad’s chemo treatments. Knowing the very slim odds for his particular cancer, all of us siblings and all the grandkids flew back to Chicago to spend a weekend with my him, knowing it could be the last time. My dad spent most of that weekend smiling at his grandkids through the backyard windows. My mom had a bit more freedom; we built a series of chicken wire fences so the grandkids could have the run of the backyard just out of reach of grandma. Eventually my mom just stayed in the house because she couldn’t bear not being able to reach out to the little ones when they inevitably fell or hit their head on something. Like a lot of things in 2020, it was strange, poignant, sad.”
“A week before I left Chicago, I was finally able to get a vaccine appointment for my mom. I sat with my mom in the waiting area of the pharmacy keeping her calm because she hates needles. Dad wouldn’t be able to get any kind of vaccines until a year out, his new stem-cell immune system essentially was that of a newborn. My sister, a teacher, was able to get vaccinated early and would soon be flying in to switch with me, since my dad was starting to walk and eat again. As my mom was fidgeting under the too-bright fluorescent lights of the waiting area, I looked sideways at her, “Ma, getting a shot is better than possibly dying.” She smiled and said, “You always say the right thing, ‘it’s better than dying’ you’re right, son.” And a few minutes later she was vaccinated, sending a selfie to the grandkids, and I cried. I sent her a similar selfie when I was allowed a vaccine shot a month later.”
“I spent a lot of time sitting with my mom, chatting with her during those several months, the worst of the pandemic, and the worst of my dad’s treatment. My dad was a shell for most of it. It’s the longest I’ve been in my childhood home since I was a teenager. I had moved away when I was 19, and started a life that took me all over the place except home, unless it was a major holiday. And when I started a freelance illustration career, both of my blue-collar immigrant parents had a hard time grasping what I did and how I sometimes wake up at noon and still made money.”
“A few days before I got on the plane, back to my wife and normalcy, my mom said to me over dinner, “You know we didn’t know what freelance meant when you started. You do this, you do that, how do we know? It’s strange to us, but we just say okay and we trust you.” “And then your sisters have kids, but you don’t have kids yet, and we say okay he’s his own man, we wait.” “But then, now when Papa needs you the most, you were the one that could come and live here, still be working and have the time to do this. And we are so grateful.””
“She wasn’t totally right of course. I’d told her many times that my sisters would be here the moment it was needed, and that this whole thing was a balancing act of compromises due to covid. And I hadn’t been working. I knew from my dad’s first bout with leukemia a few years earlier, that I wouldn’t be getting any work done, and tried to be smarter this time. This time, when I had to call clients letting them know I had to back out of projects or cut back, there were no errant tears or panic in my voice. But I didn’t correct my mom, I let myself take that one in. And honestly, even if my freelance career’s only success was to bring me to that moment; to spend months in an escape pod in pandemic deep space, to be at the footstep of my dad’s suffering and his eventual recovery, so be it. And I thank the universe for it.”
“I’m actually flying back to Chicago with my wife this weekend to visit them for the first time in nine months. I’ve been undergoing therapy for ‘anxiety/depression and adjustment disorder due to trauma’ and some other fancy labels. And my therapist thinks it’s a good idea to see my parents now, far from all the craziness of the past winter. Get a chance to refresh my view and see them in a sunnier light. I am very much looking forward to it.”
Creativity on Your Terms
It’s been 8 months since I started struggling with my creativity. One thing that has really helped me stay creative and stay productive lately is by taking life 15 minutes at a time. If I break my day down into 15 minute blocks, I only need to stay focused for a few minutes at a time and it has been great. As someone who struggles with focus on a perfect day, this tactic literally rocked my world.
So the big question is, ‘how does this apply to me?’, well all it took for me was to reach out to friends and colleagues. We had all dealt with some of the same challenges and in the end, they gave some great advice. My advice? Talk to your friends, family and colleagues, some or most of them will likely have struggled with or are currently struggling with similar challenges.
Be the change
It’s clear that no two people are the same, and no two people deal with what life throws at us in the same way either. Staying creative and focused in a time where literally NOTHING is as it was is difficult at the best of times. Some of us are able to weather the storm relatively unscathed while others do what we can to pass the obstacle directly in path, living our lives in manageable small bite-sized chunks in order to make ends meet.
Dealing with depression or anxiety or any other disorder when the world is ‘normal’ can be very difficult on a good day. Add COVID into the mix and it’s the recipe for a perfect storm. Growing up, we were told to ‘be strong’ and hide the things that would show weakness. Thankfully, the paradigm is slowly shifting. Its ok to not be ‘ok’. Asking for help is not weak, not in the least. Organizations like Bring Change to Mind strive to end the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness. Their vision, “We create multimedia campaigns, curate storytelling movements, and develop youth programs to encourage a diverse cultural conversation around mental health.” is exactly the attitude that we need.
If you would like to donate to Bring Change 2 Mind, I will gladly match donations dollar for dollar up to a total of $250.