Vikki's Diary: Episode 1 Creativity doesn't wow the people who are closest to you

 

Hot take: When you create something, the people closest to you are the least likely to be 'WOW'ed, because they KNOW you so well and they've always known you could do the things you do.

Hello internet. 

In the age of AI sucking out our brains and stripping them of thought, I've decided for therapeutic reasons to return to the age old art form of blogging in my personal time. 

For a few reasons:

1. I feel like I have things to say, but I do feel like I'm internalising them a lot lately. So I'll try to share them here, as a means of cathartic retribution.

2. I really do love to exercise the muscles in my brain, putting fingers to keyboard in a way that makes sense to me, rather than prompting a program with my baseline ideas only for it to generate a wish-wash of word salad that sounds generic, bland and grey.

In order to write really well, one needs to have some messiness. Some grittiness. Spelling and grammar, be damned. Okay, I don't really mean that last part, but if some things aren't 100% perfect, I do see it as a sign of humanity. 

3. I'm procrastinating on switching my laptop off so I can unwind. My brain just feels like it needs to churn something out and it's not finished for the day. 

I want to state here that I do enjoy the benefits AI has brought to my life. 

I use tools like Copilot and Claude every day now. I use it for research, to fix my grammar and spelling, to figure out how to lay out documents or format things, or give my web developer instructions (it's really good for that). 

But when it comes to writing, the content I deliver is usually about 80% me, 20% AI (if that). 

The above image is a thought generated 100% by me. I used Canva to produce the image and font styles used, but everything about it was from my own visualisation. 

I had this thought recently because I've just written a book. I've hit publish on Amazon and I'm waiting for the review of it to come through and tell me that it's gone 'live'. But it's real, it came from my brain, our experiences and real life with children on the autism spectrum. 

I was thinking about the people I've told about the book, and the people I'm scared to tell about the book. I've told most of my family now and a few close friends. But I had this thought, that the people closest to me can see through the smokes and mirrors. They just see me as Vikki, they still don't see me as Vikki 'published author'. 

And maybe this is because I have self-published. Maybe this feeling is specific to when you are doing things yourself instead of through a big agency or something like that? Maybe this is all in my head and I have 'imposter syndrome'. 

Alas, I had the thought; the thought is out there now. So be the thought. 

To back it up and reference pop culture at the same time, it was Liza Miller, in the sensational series about the publishing industry, Younger, who exclaimed, “Damn girl, if I didn’t know you, I’d be impressed!” to Kelsey Peters who had just delivered a directive presentation about the acquisition of a new book and her strategy to deliver it. 

What do you think about the idea that because people are close to you, they are less wowed by your achievements than if they were an acquaintance or someone you just me?