7 Creatives On How They Stay Motivated When The Robots Keep Taking Our Jobs

Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and design is not how I envisioned life and yet here we are. 

And it sucks. It’s hard to not get down about that fact that you can spend years honing in on your craft only for someone to say ‘can you just ask chatgtp, it’s free.’ It is an extremely difficult time to be a creative right now when the people who do not care for art are obsessed with profits and streamlining, and even harder to keep motivated to keep at it when jobs are drying up because some fucking robot is doing it instead. In light of all this doom and gloom I decided to ask some of the creatives we adore the most on how they keep inspired in these crazy times in the hopes that some of that inspiration will zap back to you. Godspeed.

Summer Wagner

Hanging with friends, consuming slow media like reading or long quiet movies, listening to music on a rainy porch, journaling every day, going out and creating even when it feels hard.

Thomas Campbell 

Actually I find with this shit being so pyscho globally. I can’t see very far in the future so in turn I am maybe more present to the current moment. Because that’s all we have. In some ways that is inspiring and centering. 

Floodlights

In the world we live in it feels like making music is a way to have a meaningful contribution and a cathartic way to try and encapsulate and move through different experiences and emotions that come up over the journey. Playing live is a big motivation as it’s a unifying experience that can be rare to find in day to day life, where we are able to play and in turn see how the songs land and impact on others- which can be in all different ways depending on people’s interpretations. You get to see the transmission of music taking on a meaning of its own for the audience, which is an amazing and humbling experience.

Ben Coombs

My inspiration and soaking up the visual appreciation in the everyday remains the same as it always has… however putting that into physical “brushes to canvas” time is a different story of late for me as I’ve been running my own gallery (Loved Ones) this last 7 months in Collingwood. I’ve noticed a sizeable shift in me creating paintings compared to past year. That iinspiration and creative drive is there but it’s often being the hype man for peers and emerging artists on the walls during the group and solo shows. This brings an underlying spark to paint more - not in a competitive way - but in a creative urge being stoked on art that is all around me.

Automatic Band

Halle: I keep momentum and stay inspired by putting things down when it’s not clicking. For an hour or even weeks while I work on something else. Never forcing one thing.

Izzy: it’s good to mine the past for inspiration whenever you feel nihilistic.  There’s a lot of dusty treasure on YouTube. Last week I watched Excalibur and wrote ambient music afterward. Whatever opens to gates to fantasy. Whatever helps you escape this awful place!!

Cole Walton

Being outside keeps me inspired, not looking for it is the best way to find it. But keeping momentum… I don’t know about that one. That’s pretty hard and impossible. I feel like I get bursts where I can get a tonne done but then I will have three weeks where I do nothing. Inspiration is easier to find then actually making the work. 

Wade Carroll 

I reckon the main source is my friends, talking shit with your friends and listening to whatever weird shit they have been into or something they have been working on, whether it’s chainsaw videos on YouTube or obsessing over dead shopping malls, going down rabbit holes kinda thing. I feel like after I’ve had a good hang or a chat on the phone with a good friend is when I’m feeling most inspired. Other than that, it’s music. All day everyday.