The process of creating a piece of work that didn’t formerly exist in the world can surround the author of the work in a cloud of bias that doesn’t dissipate for a long time. This may not be true for a majority of people, but I’ve noticed it in myself. I’m rarely more proud of what I’ve written or drawn than in the minutes and hours after having written or drawn it. When I look back at things I did months and years in the past, they’re nice to see in the sense that they can take me back to what my life felt like at the time I created them, but they’ve lost their potential to interest strangers, a quality that I, in arrogance, was sure they possessed shortly after finishing them.

This is not to belittle the importance of creating art. Writing stories as they unfold in imagination, hitting piano keys at random until a loop forms and grows into a song, and using pens, paints, crayons, etc. to put lines and colors on paper are all satisfying in a way that nothing else can be. Praise from strangers, while sublime, is not as important as the creation process itself.