Joyous Jealousy

I can’t find any online reference for this, but Bob Kurtz apparently coined the phrase joyous jealousy. So here’s me stealing the glory and providing said online reference:

The feeling you have when you experience someone else’s work and think: “I wish I’d made that!” followed by the thought “Well, what can I learn from that?”

This absolutely holds true for me on a number of topics: TV, games, companies, films, books and products. In thinking about it though, I seem to feel it less often with movies. I’ll have to give some thought as to why that might be. And yes, I really did say companies there.

This isn’t about purloining ideas. I didn’t watch Finding Nemo and then decide I would write a film about some fish, or even about a father looking for his lost son. Rather, this is about inspiration: watching Finding Nemo made me want to write. More than that, it made me aspire to write something that good. Why do you do what you do? A lot of writers will say it’s because they have to write; game designers might say it’s because they want to make the game that they always wanted to play. I don’t think that’s what drives me.

When people ask why I do what I do, joyous jealousy gives me a neat way to summarise it. I love to create things, to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. And when I have a positive experience other people’s work, it does inspire me to go off and create my own. I’ve even been known to get animated about things in such rushes of blood. The fact that I have so many areas that I follow is certainly a contributing factor to my lack of focus, but equally, I think it all feeds into and serves the overall creative process. Most importantly, I think, it gives me a number of creative outlets. Hopefully this helps make my ideas stronger. Perhaps it even makes me interesting, though I doubt anything could make me interesting. Possibly dangerous, since I know a little about a lot of different things, but not interesting.

Here’s a few things I am joyously jealous of:

• Anything by Pixar (The only reference I can find to Kurtz and this phrase is on the Toy Story 2 10th Anniversary DVD)
• Malcolm Gladwell books & articles
• The West Wing
• 30 Rock
• Portal
• Everyday Shooter
• Innocent
• Every company featured in Mavericks at Work
• The Walworth Farce

What inspires you to do what you do? What are you jealous of?