Ken Robinson Ted Talk - Is creativity as important as literacy?

     Growing up, I was always talented academically. I learned to read a little early and was placed into accelerated learning programs for both reading and math. While I was in school, I enjoyed creative writing, but my focus steadily shifted from creative subjects to concrete subjects like math and science. Aside from a handful of music classes in which I was successful mostly because they were notoriously easy, I didn't take many art classes. I stopped taking art class in middle school and started taking advanced math classes for my grade level, starting with Algebra 1 in seventh grade. Ultimately, I graduated 20th in my class, barely scraping into the top 20 thanks to some last-second AP classes I took senior year just to say I did.

     What did all of that academic success get me? So far, not a thing. After graduation, a veil was lifted from my eyes and I saw that I had no idea what I was doing or going to do. There wasn't and still isn't anything I'm particularly passionate about. I know a lot, sure, but I don't know what to do with any of my knowledge. I feel like I'm an incredibly smart person  held back by my own lack of passion and creativity. I'm all literate and no creative, stumbling through college hoping that eventually I'll find something to make me think, "This is what it's all been about."
 

      I used to be into creative writing and still dabble in poetry from time to time, but my artistic efforts all share a common theme. I'll start writing or playing or drawing, become frustrated that my technical skill isn't developed enough to produce what's in my mind, and give up. Like Ken Robinson said in his TED talk, I've developed a phobia of being wrong. My main source of self-esteem in school was my grades. I thought that even if I'm not the most popular or the most artistic, at least I have strong grades, which most of my peers didn't. Knowing as much as I could and proving it by never being wrong was the single most important thing to me.
 

      So now, as an adult, I am afraid to pursue anything new. I play the same old video games, watch the same shows, and exploit the familiar rather than explore the novel because I'm terrified of failing. I don't want to draw because I know it will look bad, and that is unacceptable. I'm afraid to write music because it won't sound exactly the way it does in my head, and even if it does, what if other people think it's awful? Unacceptable. I need to put in effort to start learning code, but I'm afraid of the difficulty and so I waste all of my time playing the same video games I've played a million times before, chasing that small but guaranteed dopamine release of success.
 

      This phobia of being wrong probably plays a role in my social phobias as well. I hesitate to strike up conversations with strangers because I'm afraid I'll put them off or otherwise embarrass myself, and that's a risk my ego can't take. I've been in college for a little over two months, but I haven't made any friends. Just like high school, I relate more to my teachers than to my peers. Perhaps this is because I'm in early classes and so most of my peers are significantly younger than me, so I feel like I'm on an entirely different level developmentally.
 

      Emphasizing literacy and not doing enough to foster creativity leads one to become like me, all intellectual bark and no bite. Literacy is certainly important, but without the creativity needed to apply it, literacy is borderline useless. Now that I've realized all of this, I can make an effort to change, but I've lost the seven years I spent wandering in limbo between high school graduation and now. Had I been more specifically encouraged as a child to engage in creative pursuits instead of just thinking of them as a diversion from the more important academic studies, then maybe I wouldn't have felt so lost for so long.