Strike that, reverse it

When one thinks of the ‘real world’ what tends to come to mind is ladies with shoulder pads doing important things. Bankers are in the real world and doctors too, in fact all the real people who are doing real things exist out there, somewhere other from where artists and writers are.

Creative people are in Bohemia, which is a place that doesn’t exist in the real world apart from in documentaries about the sixties. Because creative people create fantastical things they are often mistaken for being unrealistic, and as they deal with ideas that come from the collective unconscious, they are sometimes seen as being ‘unconscious’ in some way themselves, even if they have ‘real’ jobs on the side.

This narrative is so prevalent that it is easy for creative people to feel as if they are not serious in some way, or as if the work they do does not have any value. Try telling someone at a party that you’re a poet for instance and watch their face darken. On a scale of hierarchies, from king to beggar- you exist very slightly above the beggar. This is how one comes to feel as if they do not live in the real world.

However, in the words of Willy Wonka... strike that, reverse it. It’s you who gets to decide what constitutes the real world, nobody else. If you decide that building a treehouse and sleeping in it for a year as an experiment is your real world then that is where you should be. What if you, as creator and inventor are in fact in the real world right now doing serious and essential work? Could you see yourself being as crucial to society as pilots and surgeons and all the other very grown up people with extremely important jobs? And more importantly, why shouldn’t you?

Important note: Realistically, there is no real world- there is merely an illusion that we all uphold. However, for the purpose of this blog post we'll pretend that the illusion is in fact real.