The Value of a Creative Hobby

So before I dive into the main subject of this post, I figured it might be time for a couple of personal updates:

• I’m a fourth year now! Holy cow! Time is certainly flying.
• I got to help out on a project with Tim Wencewicz’s group studying how Wildfire Toxin (AKA Tabtoxinine-β-Lactam) inhibits bacterial glutamine synthetase, opening new doors for antibiotic design! The paper was recently accepted in Biochemistry.

So with that out of the way:

I found myself doing a bit of introspection lately, and I began to ponder how science is inarguably a creative venture - there’s an inherent creativity to observing phenomena and following that thread to ask and answer new questions about the universe. I don’t want to draw too many obvious parallels to how artists do the same with society, since that would be waxing poetic a bit too strongly, so I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

However, like any creative venture, science can take a drain. At some point it’s important to recognize when you’re not able to ask questions or see the patterns in data that you would normally catch. Of course not recognizing that and pushing yourself further is how burnout happens, which is an oft-discussed problem in science. Self-care is important!

Self-care can come in many forms, be it sports or sometimes just Netflix-binging, or any combination thereof. In my case, I enjoy gaming, both video and tabletop games. Specifically, I play “Dungeons and Dragons” (this should surprise nobody). And it was in thinking about D&D that I began to appreciate it’s impact on me as a scientist.

I started off playing D&D with my friends in college, and while we still play occasionally, I’ve also started playing as Game Master (or Dungeon Master) for a group here in St. Louis. Being a GM is a wholly different creative ball-game, one that has had a huge impact on me. A GM is a world-builder and represents the whole universe for their players. You have to design the world, the enemy, the characters, and the conflicts. You have to think about the rules of the game, and make sure your players don’t go on a power-trip but experience a storyline. In your own way, you get to be your own story-teller, but without all the “editing of prose”. As a bonus: You don’t have to do all the creative thinking! Your players will try and do things that you never thought would be a good idea; By a roll of the dice they will succeed or fail, leading to further hilarity and spectacular story-building that you can leap off.

Yes, being a GM gives me break from science, and it provides a bit of escapism that is sorely needed nowadays (cough Trump cough), but it’s done more than that for me as a scientist. Having to move from one creative venture to another as a break is fun! It gives you a chance to engage in something that requires your attention and creative thinking, but carries none of the weight or pressure of academia/deadlines/science. You just get to build a world that’s fun for a small group of people to interact with. By playing in this little creative playground of yours, you still get to keep those creative juices flowing, and you’ve tackled a “problem” in your own way(Namely, how do I tell my characters the story of X). Afterwards, you can return to the scientific problem you’ve been tackling with a fresh mind, but you don’t have to warm up any creative juices since you were already in that mode.

Along with just keeping that creativity fresh and alive, it’s made me a more confident presenter. A GM is a story-teller, and someone who has to present situations, describe conflicts, and do a bit of amateur voice acting. To do that means you have to be able to construct a narrative, figure out the most important details for your players to retain, and then present it in a manner that they understand (Basically, “knowing your audience”). These skills are inherently transferable to making a scientific presentation!

But above all else, I just think D&D is freaking fun. There’s something inherently fun about sitting around with a small group of friends over some drinks and doing a bit of “group story telling”. You don’t even have awkward silences, since the adventure always goes on! I’m not going to go into how having this other network outside of science is a bonus, but I do want to highlight again how playing D&D, or really dabbling in any creative venture, is a great bonus for a scientist, since in your own fun way you’re keeping those creative juices flowing and becoming a better presenter for it, even while taking a break!

At this point I think I’ve espoused enough about the values of a creative hobby. Your venture doesn’t have to be D&D, nor does it have to be something big or something you do every day(I mean sometimes we just have to binge Netflix and turn your brain off). But keep in mind, we all used to play pretend growing up as a kid, isn’t it fun to be able to still do it for small doses at a time?