One thought exercise on creativity showed me for a brief second what intrinsic reward looks like. I'll try to find that post and share it with you. To summarize,
1. Imagine a red apple. It's your own red apple.
2. It floats in space in front of you not tied to the ground or the sky.
3. Add yellow streaks of ripeness to the apple.
4. Now change its color to a color never before seen in an apple
5. Give the apple a texture.
6. Give it a finish.
7. Buff it or scuff it, it's your apple.
I did this exercise yesterday and when I woke up this morning, my apple was still with me. Though no one knew it existed, to me, it felt very real, very mine. I felt proud of that apple.
As of this moment, I enjoy my little blog with zero daily visitors and monochromatic layout just as much as I love my imagined purple apple. So what if no one knows that my apple (or I, by extension) exists? I'm just glad I made it and it's there for me to remember.
This may dissipate in the next hour but until then, I created something for its own sake, not because I got kudos for it.
E1: dropped a double word
I also do this through art history, too. This has am interesting angle to it. I habitually look for unconventional interpretations of art history but any will do. I often find little pieces of art history that I relate to a lot, or have personal theories of. Maybe others would think similarly but I don't know that and it doesn't matter. These relations are between me and a bunch of dead people and the lineage of the human mind.