Thanks for the refreshing honesty about the ambivalence of the self-promotion part of being a creator. To be honest, while James Corden is in fact correct that the real joy is in the creation, his quote belies the fact that without an audience reaction, the creation does not come to life. If you tell a great joke, but there’s no one there to crack up, then what? It still may be objectively funny, but even Johnny Carson needed an Ed McMahon.

I find joy in the creation, but I find that having an audience (no matter how small) is the contact that closes the circuit that makes the electricity.

Those numbers and notifications. They are so evil in the way they hijack the dopamine receptors, and in so many ways interfere with and conflict with the purity and joy of the creative process. And yet so damned important to fuel the creations in the first place.

The struggle is real.