In the past, when I started writing, I was spending some great numbers of minutes looking at my screen or the blank page in front of me before anything came. It was a comfortable stretch. But this kind of stretch makes me question myself sometimes if I should continue or just shift my focus to another thing. I so much hated that particular moment back then. But it was later on that I began to realize that the stretching and staring was the real work because it contains mental stress. But the discomfort was where the actual thing happened.
But after a few months into it, I discovered something in myself that I have not been totally comfortable admitting. Staring at the page for long no longer sits like that. Not because I got better at knowing what to put down. But because I became better at reaching for something that fills it for me. And the two are totally, entirely different things. So different.
And the difference is what most discussions about AI and creativity are missing entirely. There have been a lot of debates on the output, and we still have ongoing debates on whether the output is good enough. Whether the results from AI are true creativity or whether AI will not replace people's jobs. These are some of the questions that people have been asking and debating. What the question I will like to ask her is what happens to those who stop struggling. Because the struggle was never just inefficiency. It was where people got to realize what they actually thought, what they actually accepted, and what their voice was centered on before anything external shaped it.
Let me cite this example that most of us can easily relate to. While growing up, I watched my parents solve problems with nothing. There was less of this technology we now have today back then. No blueprint, no resources, no system that worked reliably. The typical lifestyle of most households, I guess with limited income, is a daily exercise in creative ways that problems are being solved. The alternative is standard still, hence a need for improvement. And this is the improvisation that built something in them that I can still see in the way they handle some things today. It was not a skill exactly. It was a reflex that they developed due to the fact that a difficult situation might arise and something must be done.
And that is what ease will never do, no reflex. Because ease is going to remove those things that make it necessary. What I am saying here is that AI is not wrong or should be avoided. I use it sometimes too. And most of the people I know also use it, no doubt. But recently, the question I have been asking myself is, "Can AI do this?" But what do I lose if I take my time to be creative and do it myself"? Because my main work does not require AI, and the answer I got is sometimes nothing, and that is everything for me.
Thank you for reading.
Images created by Gemini AI
