Why do you do what you do as an artist or a human?

The answer will take time to emerge.  Most people live on autopilot.  They neither try to make things better not worse.  They find a formula, and hibernate. 

Here is a simple test.  List a few answers such as

I want to be a celebrity

I want to be rich

I want to be respected

I want…

Now take any pair of them and decide which one is more important.  Give it a score of 1.  At the end of paring you will have a true motivation emerge?

When I ask artists why they do what they do I often hear a waterfall of the words.  There is nothing wrong to be financially motivated.  There is nothing wrong with having two answers: one for public one for you.  The important is to think it through.  It is also important to review answers every so often.  The world changes and so do we.  It is common for people to move to another creative field or start a new career.  It is fun to have more than one life.  It is fun to say “in my previous life as a poet…” 

When someone says “I do it because of the internal conflict” that sounds interesting to the psychologists.  It’s too broad, too loose and undefined.  Or when someone says I do it because it is my style and I always did that.  Not true.  You did not do it when you were a child.  So why do you what you do?