Alora Fane

Most highly creative people struggle with depression to some degree, and I read an article about that which I wanted to mention here. Unrelatedly, maybe I could sell my old, unfinished games on itch.io? Do you know anything about it?

It's a new week, and I'm struggling once again to push my way through the dark mental fog... I did very little last week and don't really want this week to be wasted as well. I'm not exactly off to a good start though...

While procrastinating, I came across ∞ this interesting article about the connection between creativity and mood disorders ∞. It talks about a book (which I should read) written by a psychiatrist/neuroscientist - Nancy Andreasen - who studied this connection, and who found that most great creators did have some experience with mental illness, particularly mood disorders such as depression. Rather than being 'tortured geniuses' who created because of this exactly, it's more that they were able to create despite it. That is, they weren't creative when they were deep in the depression - how could they be? - but spun what they found in those mental caves into tapestries once they resurfaced.

The whole article is very interesting to me since creativity and psychology are the most fascinating things in the world to me. Plus it's always reassuring, I suppose, whenever I hear that others walking not-entirely-dissimilar paths to me have encountered similar obstacles. I found this quoted paragraph from the book particularly interesting:

Many personality characteristics of creative people … make them more vulnerable, including openness to new experiences, a tolerance for ambiguity, and an approach to life and the world that is relatively free of preconceptions. This flexibility permits them to perceive things in a fresh and novel way, which is an important basis for creativity. But it also means that their inner world is complex, ambiguous, and filled with shades of gray rather than black and white. It is a world filled with many questions and few easy answers. While less creative people can quickly respond to situations based on what they have been told by people in authority — parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, or priests — the creative person lives in a more fluid and nebulous world. He or she may have to confront criticism or rejection for being too questioning, or too unconventional. Such traits can lead to feelings of depression or social alienation. A highly original person may seem odd or strange to others. Too much openness means living on the edge. Sometimes the person may drop over the edge… into depression, mania, or perhaps schizophrenia.

It resonates with recent mental activity because my high trait Openness - which creativity either is or is at least tightly associated with - does seem to give me an unusual shades-of-grey impression of the current political landscape. And I'm constantly worried about facing criticism because my approach might be an unconventional one. That of course plays with all the anxiety-based fears of judgement - exacerbated by past judgements I have indeed faced - and leads to worrying openly a lot about things like the sexual objectification stuff recently.

Another quote from the book says:

One point of view … is that gifted people are in fact supernormal or superior in many ways. My writers certainly were. They were charming, fun, articulate, and disciplined.

Ha. I wish!

Maybe you have to be both creative and those things to be notable enough to write articles and books about.

Also, whenever I read about these ~great authors~ who wrote these lauded classics, I wonder whether what I'm making could ever be remotely compared, or whether anything in the video games domain would just be dumped in the pulp bin. I imagine everyone reading this would agree that at least some games are art, but I wonder if they'd be seen as such by the sorts of people who think so highly of these literary geniuses. And even if those people did see some great games that way, would anyone see mine that way? Not the old stuff, but the newer things I've not yet released. Makes me wonder how many people out there are creating amazingly unconventional things and just never getting noticed, though.

I mostly just wanted to write a post about that, but since I feel it's not massively interesting to people who aren't me, I'll add another bit related to the post this one will be replacing on the front page.

In that post, I talked about wanting to re-release old games in some form, but wasn't sure how. I'm still not sure!

But I'm aware that ∞ itch.io ∞ allows developers to easily upload their games and assign prices to them, so maybe that's an option? It's certainly much easier than Steam.

My only concern is how worthwhile it'd even be; maybe itch.io is just way too small?

Though it's not like they're going to be highly-in-demand games anyway, so maybe that's the best path forward.

It'll take time though. So if I'm completely unable to focus on Atonal Dreams this week, but have enough energy for this, I might give it a try. I don't need to upload everything at once; maybe I could start with Clarence's Big Chance or something.

Do you know anything about itch.io? Have you used it?

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