Congratulations, and to quote one of my favorite TV-characters;
- Welcome to a life of insecurity and paralyzing self-doubt!
Creativity - the need to create. Whether it is composing, writing, painting, photography or making pine cone animals or ships in bottles I would claim it's far beyond a hobby.
If you suffer this condition, you need it.
It is my firm belief that creativity that's not allowed to roam freely, that is kept locked up inside will inevitably wither but never die. It will just lay there and fester.
It's like those nightmares where you scream from the top of your lungs in horror, but not a sound will come out.
For many years I searched for my creative "out".. I feel like I've tried it all.
I've played several instruments, I sang, I snapped pictures, I painted, though my paintings were reminiscent of those painted by zoo-animals.
Nothing caught my real interest though. I quickly got to a point were it just wasn't fun. I didn't care to learn bar chords, or advanced piano sheet music, nor painting perspectives or the technicalities of photography. Nothing ever worked out as I wanted it to anyway. My hands were always left incapable of performing what my mind so desperately wanted them to.
You feel inadequate, without that out. You're screaming, without a sound.
And then I found it. It was there all along I just somehow forgot.
Writing.
I used to love to write. I wrote stories any chance I got as a kid. I, as many others, gave deep poetry a shot as a teenager as a way of dealing with all that teenage-angst, but then I somehow forgot it.
The written word has always been my favorite way of expressing myself. When I first met my husband, I didn't always tell him how I felt, and I've certainly never been, though I wish I was much of a "show-er".
As cheesy as it sounds, I wrote him, and you know what the best part of that is? The written word remains. 9 years down the line, those letters are still here and I hope when I am being particularly hard to love, he brings them out to remind himself that sometimes, I can be nice too.
Anyway, a little off topic there..
I've come to realize that creativity does not only demand creativity, it also demands confidence.
Do you remember when you were little, and you'd painted something which you proudly showed you parents, who went; "Oh wow, that's wonderful... What is it?"
You didn't take offense, you just went ahead and explained that obviously it was a robot-moose family that lived in the spaceship in the background.. or something. And so you parents went;
"Oh, well of course it's robot-moose.. I see that now!" and then they hung your surrealistic piece of art on the fridge.
What happens to that confidence? Who or what is it that is robbing us of it?
Take my sister for example. I am not by any means saying she's painting robot-moose or the like. I find her paintings striking and absolutely great. I have no idea how they would hold up in the "art-world" but she made them, hung them in her living room and thus is saying; "I made these, they turned out great and I have pride in my work." And I can't help but wonder, who will question it?
That kind of confidence will get you far. "I made it, I'm proud of it and I don't give a shit what some unemployed art-major might have to say about my work in comparison with Picasso's!"
I may not have majored in art, but trust me, she wins!
Dare do it! Or the demons who keep your creativity locked up will eat you alive.
"Creative people are more prone to depression."
Yes, I am willing to believe that. It's like being left completely unable to move or communicate yet having your senses and consciousness intact. The claustrophobia - I can't even think about it.
No, you might not be Picasso, Hemingway or Antonio Vivaldi but who cares? Do it!
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