How am I not…

How are you creative?

How am I not creative?

I have for as long as can I remember, been over the top creative. I had a brief teenage time of self rejection, when I thought it was my curse. I’ve raged against my right brainedness from time to time, since, but usually end up grateful for it. Sometimes I feel other people’s eye rolls, or their exasperation, but usually, I’m too busy reinventing some odd wheel in my over active brain, to be bothered to care.

Oh I have longed for the conventional. Why didn’t I get a brain that wanted to study to become a nurse or an accountant or something real and tangible. Something that makes sense and can be stated without explanation. ‘I’m an engineer, I’m a paralegal. I go to work and do this… wouldn’t I be better accepted and way more useful?

Well. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that there is no joy and certainly nothing to be gained by rejecting oneself or one’s personality (or brain). When I finally learned to embrace my way-outside- the-box- ness, I did find some peace. I’m very grateful for that peace because I do still wonder from time to time why I couldn’t be more of a balanced sort. Like an employee with a creative hobby…

Getting back to the question of how am I creative? HOW am I creative? How AM I creativitve? How am I CREATIVE?

I guess it starts before I open my eyes each morning. I go over what I’m grateful for and that gets me thinking of my latest projects. I start turning them over in my mind, thinking of improvements, exploring possibilities…

This turns into planning my day. What will I include? What am I excited about? What possibilities are there for me? What do I want to do to get my juices flowing? What am I feeling inspired by? Do I need more inspiration? Do I need more information? Creativity is like a fire. It starts with a tiny spark that needs to be fed. To keep a fire going it needs to be tended. If I let it die, I need only to start again and with a new spark. Sometimes things move me to tears, that’s what inspiration feels like to me. It’s a strong feeling of love or devotion that makes me feel deeply and then drives me to act and make something. Hence create. It’s such a familiar natural process that I’m struggling to find words to describe it. That strong woosh of inspiration like a full force wind is impossible to ignore, and I don’t want to! Fanning the flame, getting down to work is the harder part. Nothing comes out like the perfection in my head. I often put on music to cancel out the noise of criticism. (my own!) and pick my way forward.

Being creative is not always as fun and easy as some people think. There is real labor involved and often it’s a lengthy process. Hemingway once said something about writing like, you just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein. ( I think he meant a literal blood vessel) Many of the varibles aren’t known and some haven’t been invented yet. None of this can be over thought, because it’s easy to give up. Finding FLOW is the aim. That sweet spot where time falls away and I’m in a full mind/body meld with my project.

I have many tricks to fan the fire of flow. As an artist you know the importance of flow. It commands its own reverence because it feels like a collaboration with something much bigger, smarter, better than I myself could ever hope to be. It’s the closest thing to bumping up against the devine that I know. But it’s often in the form of tiny surprises or minute surety in a stroke or several strokes. It’s what lives on in art. The energy you might feel when you connect with a piece of art. It’s what gives me the confidence and motivation to keep going with something. I can’t unremember how words fell together or paintings painted themselves. It feels significant even if no one else ‘sees’ or ‘likes’ what I do. Thank literal God for not leaving me alone to shoulder the responsibility of my creations.

I wish I was a brilliant song writer because how they explain the process of words just coming out of them is exactly how I would discribe creations coming out of me. I’ll never have anything on iTunes though sigh…