Control the monster

Anthony Bourdain once said that creating something and expecting them to like it enough to watch past the commercial was insane. “There’s something a bit monstrous about that mentality.” But, he said, we need that mentality as makers. It’s a delusion that we share — that we’re capable of processing the world through our own minds in such a way that the output is a creation others like.

What Bourdain didn’t say, because Bourdain didn’t suffer fools, was that we need to control our internal monsters. While we rely on that mentality, we can’t let it run wild if and when we make something others like.

We all know people who have lost control. Thanks to money, or a few more book sales than others, or public acclaim, or followers, or some other vanity metric, they become twisted, gnarled versions of themselves. They’re caricatures, and not in the funny way. Everything down to their smug, over-posed profile photos suggest the monster has taken over. They’re dangerously in love with themselves.

Bourdain knew about this issue, of course. He wrote about these egomaniacs in the culinary world in his books. Heck, he wrote about becoming one, and the bad habits and flaws that eventually took over and brought him crashing down. When he rebuilt his career in TV, he didn’t need any warning. He knew he’d be surrounded by people whose monsters had devoured them.

Thanks to social media and the Internet more broadly, every niche now contains those people. And our trick as creators who serve? Our imperative? Control the monster.

The mentality needed to do something impossible, to make something others genuinely like and invest time with, doesn’t run rampant beyond the project itself. It doesn’t consume the people we are. In other words, we believe we can make something others like. We don’t believe WE are what others like. If others say nice things about us, fantastic. That’s fuel to go create. It’s not cause to assume we are the good thing. The work is. The effort is. The value others found was found in the project, not the person behind it. They’re related, but not the same thing.

As creators, we possess a crazy belief—we can make something they like—which fuels the making process. But we don’t let that belief change us as people.

You might have a monstrous mentality, and that’s great. That’s needed. Because you do something rather monstrous (in the best sense of the word). But always remember to stop the beast from melding with your sense of self.

In this look-at-me era, remain humble, hardworking, and kind. Control the monster.