I discovered programming at the age of 35, which, to be honest, I think is pretty late if you compare to the young folks working in high tech who program practically since their fingers were able to type on a keyboard. Before that, I was a full-time musician, working in recording studios and playing gigs all around the world.

我发现编程年龄在35岁，说实话，如果您与从事高科技领域的年轻人(因为他们的手指能够在键盘上打字)进行编程相比，我认为这已经很晚了。 在那之前，我是一名专职音乐家，曾在唱片公司工作，并在世界各地演奏演出。

I won’t go into the details of the story of why I decided to learn programming but what I’d like to talk about is why I consider that programming healed me and how it transformed me into a new person.

我不打算讲述为什么决定学习编程的故事，但我想谈的是为什么我认为编程可以治愈我，以及它如何使我成为一个新人。

There’s a lot of self-improvement advice out there stating that it’s important to foster your creativity to lead a happy and healthy life. The internet is full of blog posts explaining why it’s important for everyone to have a creative outlet, whether it’s writing some morning pages, take on a craft as a hobby or going out to a karaoke bar with friends and having fun singing badly your favourite tunes after having a drink (or 2, or 3…).

那里有很多自我完善的建议，指出培养您的创造力，过上幸福而健康的生活很重要。 互联网上到处都是博客，这些博客解释了为什么每个人都拥有一个创造性的渠道很重要，无论是写一些早晨的书，把手Craft.io品当成嗜好还是和朋友一起去卡拉OK吧，并且开心地唱着自己喜欢的曲调都很开心喝一杯(或2或3…)后。

Experts say that creativity allows for better problem solving, releases stress and anxiety, and can even help with mental health issues like depression. Being an artist, it would be strange if I didn’t support this line of thought… But something intrigues me: what about the people who are on the other side of the spectrum?

专家说 ，创造力可以更好地解决问题，释放压力和焦虑，甚至可以帮助解决诸如抑郁之类的心理健康问题。 作为一名艺术家，如果我不支持这种思路，那将很奇怪。。。但是有些让我着迷的是：另一端的人呢？

Not many people talk about the issues arising from an excess of creativity when being creative is a full-time occupation. I’m not talking about problems like creativity running dry or writer’s block or anything related to creative exhaustion, I’m talking about the psychological issues arising as after-effects of cultivating creativity to an extreme.

当创造力是全职工作时，很少有人谈论因过度创造力而产生的问题。 我不是在谈论诸如创造力枯竭或作家的障碍之类的问题，也不是与创造力耗尽有关的任何问题，我在谈论的是因将创造力培养到极致而产生的心理问题。

全职创意生活的阴暗面 (The Dark Side Of A Full-Time Creative Life)

As much as creativity can be a cure to mental health problems created by either unhealthy everyday life routines or childhood traumas, what’s the cure for people suffering from an excess of creativity? Is that even a real issue?

创造力可以解决因日常生活不健康或童年创伤造成的心理健康问题，那么对于那些过度创造力的人们有什么治疗方法呢？ 那甚至是一个真实的问题吗？

I believe it is because I experienced it first hand. My creativity was so overly stimulated since very early on in life that I grew up to become a completely irrational person. I had no control over my emotions, I was hypersensitive and didn’t know how to deal with the constant overwhelming flow of information and stimuli the world would present me.

我相信这是因为我亲身经历了。 自从我很小的时候就激发了我的创造力，我长大以后成为一个完全不理性的人 。 我无法控制自己的情绪，我非常敏感，也不知道如何应对不断涌现的不断涌现的信息和刺激。

I couldn’t make decisions based on anything else other than my feelings and I’d obsess over simple things for the longest periods of time. In short, I was in a constant emotional hell, very prone to depression, and unable to fully face the outside world.

除了感觉之外，我无法做出其他决定，并且我会在最长的时间内沉迷于简单的事情。 简而言之，我处于一个不断情绪化的地狱中，非常容易沮丧，无法完全面对外界。

I slowly learned to live with my condition and accept my hyper-sensitivity and social anxiety as a strength instead of a weakness. I found comfort in believing the age-old stereotype: artists need to suffer from depression, be completely neurotic, or have any other kind of disorder or mental illness feeding their creativity to justify their genius. I accepted my depression thinking it was bringing me closer to being like the creative geniuses I admired.

我慢慢地学会了适应自己的状况，并接受我的超敏React和社交焦虑作为优势而不是劣势。 我相信古老的刻板印象是很安慰的：艺术家需要患有抑郁症，完全神经过敏，或者患有任何其他种类的疾病或精神疾病，以充实自己的创造力来证明自己的才华。 我接受了沮丧，认为这使我更像我崇拜的创造天才。

Of course, that was silly.

当然，这很愚蠢。

Even though this stereotype is still present today in society’s perception of creative people, it’s important to know that many studies tried to show the correlation between creativity and mental illness, without any great success.

尽管当今社会对创造力人士的看法仍然存在这种刻板印象，但重要的是要知道，许多研究试图证明创造力与精神疾病之间的关系 ，但没有取得很大的成功。

“There’s only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” — Salvador Dali

“疯子和我之间只有一个区别。 我没生气。” —萨尔瓦多·达利

编程如何治愈我 (How Programming Healed Me)

Learning computer programming forced my brain to think rationally, which I was completely unable to do. It provided me with the safety of right and wrong answers: your code either works or it doesn’t. This reality can be incredibly frustrating at times but for an artist like me, where there’s rarely this notion of right and wrong (in Art, rules are made to be broken and everything is subjective), the fact of having my computer give me the exact result of the code I’d written was, in a weird way, a huge relief.

学习计算机编程迫使我的大脑进行理性思考，这是我完全无法做到的。 它为我提供了正确与错误答案的安全性：您的代码有效或无效。 这种现实有时可能会令人沮丧，但对于像我这样的艺术家，在这里很少有对与错的观念(在艺术中，规则被打破，一切都是主观的)，拥有我的计算机的事实给了我确切的印象。我编写的代码的结果以一种怪异的方式带来了巨大的缓解。

For the first time in my adult life, I felt at peace inside. My inner voices quieted down and I was no longer a slave of this incessant and noisy chatter going on in my head. I found comfort in relying on objective facts like proofs provided by math and science. I wasn’t lost in an endless “grey zone” anymore.

在我的成年生活中，我第一次感到内心的平静。 我内心的声音平静了下来，我不再是脑海中不断吵杂的chat声的奴隶。 我发现在依靠客观事实(如数学和科学证明)方面感到放心。 我不再迷失在无尽的“灰色地带”。

I remember literally feeling like new circuits were being formed in my brain. Every new piece of information I was learning felt like receiving an intense brain massage and this sensation was amazing.

我记得从字面上感觉就像是我的大脑正在形成新的电路。 我正在学习的每条新信息都感觉像受到了强烈的脑部按摩，这种感觉真是太神奇了。

After only a few months, my personality started to change. I began to realize the gaps in my way of life and the way of life of other artists and creatives around me. I saw the lack of organization, the inability to make effective decisions, the oversensitivity that made collaborations between artists and musicians so difficult sometimes… and I started to react to these challenges differently.

仅仅几个月后，我的性格开始改变。 我开始意识到自己与周围其他艺术家和创作者之间的差距。 我看到组织不足，无法做出有效的决策，过于敏感，有时使艺术家和音乐家之间的合作变得如此困难……我开始以不同的方式应对这些挑战。

I developed objectivity and I could communicate rationally and without emotions, for the sake of work well-done. I had control over my emotions, I didn’t feel the need to act on them constantly: I could choose rationally whether my feelings were founded or whether it was better for me to set them aside in specific situations.

为了工作的顺利进行，我发展了客观性，我可以理性地，没有情绪地交流。 我可以控制自己的情绪，我不觉得需要不断地对它们采取行动：我可以理性地选择是否建立自己的感觉，或者在特定情况下将它们搁置一旁更好。

I became incredibly curious and started to learn new things for the sake of learning, for this incredible feeling of putting my brain to work on something new. I’d wake up full of energy and couldn’t wait to start learning and applying what I learned by working on ideas of my own.

我变得非常好奇，为了学习而开始学习新事物，因为这种令人难以置信的感觉使我的大脑致力于新事物。 我会精神焕发，等不及要开始学习并运用自己的想法来应用所学到的知识。

Not all my friends appreciated the change. In fact, at some point, I decided to do a massive clean up of my inner circles. Some people were offended by my new objective and rational way of communicating, some felt like the musician in me had disappeared and were disappointed with the new direction my life seemed to be taking, and some others… I just didn’t have the patience for their bullshit anymore. It was a tough time but a necessary step in order to transform my life.

并不是所有的朋友都喜欢这种变化。 实际上，在某个时候，我决定彻底清理自己的内心圈子。 有些人因为我新的客观和理性的沟通方式而生气，有些人觉得我的音乐家失踪了，对我的生活似乎正在走的新方向感到失望，而另一些人……我只是没有耐心他们的废话了。 那是艰难的时期，但是改变我的生活的必要步骤。

The first 2 years I spent learning programming were the happiest 2 years of my life. I found peace and I found balance. So the question came to my mind: did computer programming heal me? I think it did. I’m so grateful I could discover a passion that encouraged me to develop rational thinking.

我学习编程的前两年是我一生中最快乐的两年。 我找到了和平，我找到了平衡。 于是我想到了一个问题：计算机编程能治愈我吗？ 我认为是的。 我非常感激能发现一种鼓励我发展理性思考的热情。

结论 (Conclusion)

I’m not saying programming is the answer for every creative person suffering from an excess of creativity but I believe it’s possible for every creative to find an equivalent activity, whether it’s math, electronics, physics, building a house, or anything else that requires rational thinking.

我并不是说编程是每一个遭受过多创造力困扰的创造者的答案，但我相信每个创造者都有可能找到同等的活动，无论是数学，电子，物理学，盖房子还是其他任何需要的活动理性思考。

Programming changed my life on a very deep level. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it. In fact, I’d probably still be a depressed mess unable to find my true direction in life. Contrary to popular beliefs, becoming more down to earth and rational didn’t affect my creative power, quite the opposite actually.

编程极大地改变了我的生活。 没有它，我不会成为今天的我。 实际上，我可能仍然是一个沮丧的混乱者，无法找到我真正的生活方向。 与普遍的看法相反，脚踏实地和理性并没有影响我的创造力，实际上恰恰相反。

We don’t need to be depressed, neurotic, or wounded to create. We can be at peace and feel whole. Programming taught me that and through this understanding, I discovered my true self.

我们不需要沮丧，神经质或受伤就可以创造。 我们可以安心，感到完整。 编程告诉我，通过这种理解，我发现了自己的真实自我。

Originally published at https://www.earthtoabigail.com on August 11, 2020.

最初于 2020年8月11日 发布在 https://www.earthtoabigail.com 上。