Make Something That Bleeds: A Manifesto for Soulful Creation in a Synthetic World
- Roy Sharples
- Jun 3
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 5
A manifesto for the unpolished, the unrepentant, and the utterly irreplaceable.
Somewhere between your last brand sprint and your fifth Figma iteration,
you lost it.
That thing.
The strange shimmer.
The heartbeat.
The irrational, inconvenient, all-consuming urge to make something
not because it was smart—
but because not making it felt like death.
Instead, you optimized.
You aligned.
You rewrote the soul out in version 12.3 of the pitch deck
because “Legal had some concerns.”
And now?
You're not creating.
You're decorating.
You’ve made a product that no one hates—
but no one would cry for if it vanished.
THE ART OF SANITIZED NOTHINGNESS
Your content calendar is full.
Your metrics are green.
Your brand is "trusted."
And still—
it doesn’t feel like anything.
Because you were never meant to perform creativity.
You were meant to bleed for it.
All this polish, and for what?
To be scrollable?
To not offend?
To disappear faster?
Clean is where feeling goes to die.
Safe is where stories forget how to breathe.
THE BLEED TEST
Here’s how you know it’s real:
Does it feel like telling a secret with no guarantee of applause?
Would it be rejected by at least two executives and a brand manager?
Could someone tattoo a line from it on their ribs and not regret it?
Does it sound like you, or a version of you that’s been through HR?
If you’re not sweating, second-guessing, or getting irrationally defensive…
it’s not ready.
Start again.
This time:
Make something that bleeds.
THE CULTURE LEFT WITHOUT YOU
While you were ideating, the world moved on.
Minimalists told us to own less.
Teenagers built empires in 17 seconds on TikTok.
Your competitor sparked a movement—
from their phone,
in bed,
half-asleep at 2 a.m.
They didn’t wait for Q4.
They didn’t seek alignment.
They didn’t write a brand purpose statement.
They felt something
—and they let it loose.
The brands that last aren’t optimized.
They’re possessed.
MAKE THE THINGS ONLY YOU CAN
Not the things that get you hired.
The things that keep you awake.
Not the things that scale.
The things that can’t be replicated
because they’re stitched from the guts of your own experience.
Your fingerprints.
Your flaws.
Your voice uncorrected by consensus.
Before frameworks.
Before funnels.
Before your creativity got kidnapped by your LinkedIn profile—
There was this:
You.
The idea.
And a blank space that asked nothing but honesty.
Go back there.
Burn the map.
WHAT BLEEDING LOOKS LIKE
It’s not performative suffering.
It’s devotion.
Disruption without the smugness.
Expression without the audience in mind.
Bleeding is writing the draft that makes you tremble.
Shipping the version you love, even if the data hates it.
Saying the thing that might be misunderstood,
but must be said.
It’s the opposite of clever.
It’s the opposite of calculated.
It’s true.
FINAL TRANSMISSION
This isn’t a productivity tip.
This isn’t a branding trend.
This is a reckoning.
A call to the wild, weird, wounded part of you
that knows how to make what can’t be faked.
What can’t be scaled.
What can’t be improved by stakeholder feedback.
Make something that pulses.
Make something that misbehaves.
Make something that gets under the skin and stays there.
Forget legacy.
Forget traction.
Forget relevance.
Make something that bleeds.
Let it ruin your reputation.
Let it cost you.
Let it mark you.
That’s what art does.
That’s what truth does.
That’s what only you can do.
Read the Book. Stoke the Fire.
by Roy Sharples
How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future.
Founder of Unknown Origins.
Champion of originality in an age of imitation.
Attitude. Imagination. Execution.
Unknown Origins Creative Studios All rights reserved © copyright 2025
