Well, we made it through 2025.
It’s a weird time to call yourself a writer. Or a designer. Or an artist. Or any kind of creative, really.
Talk to anyone about your creative work these days, and chances are you’ll get at least one tactless dudebro who asks “Can’t ChatGPT just do that for you?”
I’ve even had clients, more than once, suggest I just toss some prompts into AI and utilize whatever it spits out.
“It’s good enough.”
But like… is it?
Everything we do now has to be optimized. Efficient. Justifiable. We save time with meal kits, same-day delivery, AI-generated calendars filled with LinkedIn bot invites. We sign up for subscriptions and services that promise to give us back our time, but for what?
So we can doomscroll longer? So we can get served even more ads and partnership posts made by influencers breaking their backs trying to keep up with the ever-changing, all-seeing algorithm?
I don’t know. We’ve gotten really good at buying time, but I feel like we’ve forgotten how to spend it.
And somewhere along the way, a lot of us stopped creating just for the joy of it.
A few weeks ago, my dad—who’s been in marketing longer than I’ve been alive—sent me a batch of logos he’d made for a friend. The second I opened the file, I knew they weren’t his; the lines were off, the shapes collapsing into strange proportions, like a too-small mouth full of jagged teeth. It was generative AI, and not even the subtle kind.
When I asked him about it, he shrugged. “It’s for a good friend, and I’m not getting paid anything.”
All I could think to say was “Is your good friend not worth the joyful effort of creating?”
He didn’t have an answer, really. That moment’s been sitting with me since.
And I think the hardest part about it is that a lot of us are feeling it. The fatigue. The disconnection. The way that creativity has turned from something we love into something we leverage.
It’s been happening for a long time, anyway.
Ask anyone who works in a creative field and they’ll tell you: by the time the client work is done, the emails are answered, and the revisions are made, there’s not much left in the tank for your own stuff. The personal project you swore you’d start, whether it was a song, a sketch, or a story… it quietly slips into the “someday” folder while you scroll through TikTok Shop with a bowl of protein slop at 9:42 PM.
But what’s different now is the volume and the pressure. The way EVERYTHING we touch feels like it should be shared, monetized, scheduled, even made “better” by AI. It’s no longer that we’re just tired; now we’re being told that joy isn’t productive enough to be worth our time. And when your joy starts to feel optional, so does your “why”.
In the past five years alone, I’ve seen an uptick in movies, stories, videogames, where the villain isn’t even an individual anymore: it’s the unrelenting pressure of nihilism, the idea that nothing matters.
Earlier this year, Nike released a campaign that flipped their iconic slogan.
Not Just do it.
But: Why do it?
And sure, it was aimed at athletes, but I think the message spanned industries. It was an invitation to look inward. To ask ourselves “Why am I still doing this? Why does it still matter to me?"
What’s underneath all the algorithms, expectations, and external noise?
Where does my output end and my identity begin?
That answer varies for everyone, and so many creatives are wrestling with it right now. In a world that wants you to be fast, monetizable, digestible, constantly producing… what is your why?
And if you’ve lost it, that’s okay. You’re not alone.
But maybe it’s time to go looking for it again.
I’ve been thinking about this kind of creative fatigue a lot lately; it’ll make an appearance in Liz’s upcoming book, The 9 Types of Creatives and How to Manage Them. It’s a collection of creative archetypes Liz has identified in her 14 years in the industry, built on her own lived experience.
One of those profiles is called The Remnant: the seasoned creative who’s given so much for so long, they’ve started to wonder if the spark is even still there. This time of year—when things get quiet, when everyone’s setting goals, when reflection turns into self-comparison—that feeling gets louder. We question if the spark is gone for good.
It’s not, by the way. It might just be hibernating right now, tucked beneath a year of effort, survival, and doing what had to be done. And that’s okay. You don’t need a resolution or a personal rebrand to get it back.
You just need one small, joyful thing. A messy doodle. A line in your notes app. A photo you don’t post. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to create something world-shattering. You just need to create something for you—something that reminds your brain (and your heart) that creating is still yours. No matter what AI is doing. No matter what the internet says.
And look, this isn’t a 100% anti-AI blog post, necessarily.
AI is a tool. We use it sometimes too. It helps with speed, with flow, with the busywork. Two things can be true at once: AI can be helpful, and also deeply unoriginal. It can assist you, and also overwhelm you. It can save time, but it can’t save your soul.
Creativity is so much more than the final product; the process is where the value is.
We live in a time where it’s easy to feel like everything can be generated, optimized, and sold back to us in seconds… courtesy of yet another Silicon-something startup. AI might be quick, but it’s not inventive. It’s an amalgamation of human ingenuity, perpetually gorging itself on our ideas and regurgitating them back in different shapes.
At the end of the day, those ideas were ours first. Full of texture, conflict, tenderness, and a desire to be understood.
And we are still here, with our hands, and our hearts.
Our imperfect, messy experiences, waiting to be translated in the only way they can be: by us.
At DayCloud, we live in that space. We’re a creative business, yes, but we’re not a content factory. We don’t shove clients into one-size-fits-all frameworks or spit out copy-paste campaigns for ROI. Our job is to make human brands: intentional, dimensional, and personalized.
We believe in strategy, but we also believe in spark.
And as we close out the year, our hope is that you find your way back to yours.
Make something that doesn’t need to be useful. Something that doesn’t have to prove anything. Something that brings you back to yourself.
May you protect your spark. May you make space for joy. And may you remember:
Your creativity is not a commodity. It’s part of being alive.
Until next time.
Happy New Year,
Keaton Haines
Marketing Coordinator @ DayCloud Studios
