I thought I'd add this as a comment to Sandi's post about the tapering off of the blog, but then figured it might be too long.
As you all know, I lost my job just before the new year. Before that, I'd been working flat out for approximately the last 7 years, in more than one country and in more than a few jobs. Along the way, I got married, and therefore, in a sense, started a family (sans kids). For most of that time, my writing activity either dropped off dramatically or even disappeared, and I convinced myself that I had a permanent case of writer's block. Creatively speaking, most of the last 7 or so years were a dead end.
I can't remember when this was, perhaps 2 summers ago when I was home, but I bought a copy of Corel Painter. Honestly, I had never drawn in my life before, and never thought I had any talent in that direction. A half-assed stick man was about all I could muster. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found I COULD produce something...not high art, by any means, but something.
Not to make this sound like a religious conversion or anything, but I tried to figure out why and how this drawing thing happened. Where did the ability come from? Why did it happen so "late"? Was Corel Painter responsible? In short, it was like a revelation to me...here is some ability I have, that I never knew existed, and it opened up a whole new door of creativity for me. That was about a year and a half ago, and I've been drawing ever since...it seems like the ideas I would before have expressed in writing now make their way into pictures. That's not to say the writing is completely dead, however; it just has a new outlet.
Nobody likes to lose their job, I know, but for me, the conjunction of this happening and the blog starting was a happy conjunction. I just turned 37, and quite frankly don't want to keep all of my creativity inside anymore, which I had done for most of the past 37 years. I'm not sure how it is for anyone else, but I HAVE to be a creative person...its physically and mentally painful for me not to be creative. "Burning desire", I suppose you could call it. Anyone could argue that work, family, etc. are important, and they are, but your "music" is just as important. I remember a quotation from one of the Sherlock Holmes stories: "When a man has a hobby, he follows it up no matter what his other interests might be."
So, I'm with Sandi on this one. We need to keep this thing going strong all the time.
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I'll have to post this as a testimonial for Painter. We may have to change "Sandi gave me" to "I bought a copy", but what the heck.
ReplyDeleteI think we all got a little distracted by what we were supposed to be doing; going to school, learning something that would get us a job, get said job, work, pay the bills. It's a little cliche, but there's got to be more to life than that.
I really enjoy the show Heroes, and a couple of the main characters felt it in their soul that they were supposed to be something more than they were; as if there was some higher purpose to their lives. I'm not saying I want to save the cheerleader or the world (that's a little Heroes humour), but I just have this feeling like I have this potential that has been, up until now, untapped.
I'm finding that it doesn't matter how old you are anymore. Age is really just a number. It's not too late to try and turn these creative pursuits into regular hobbies, and maybe more. Hopefully, this is just the start of something special.
Offending sentence re: Corel changed :)
ReplyDeleteIf you've ever heard of or read any Wayne Dyer books, he says quite a bit about "following your heart", or, as he puts it "expressing the music inside you", because, as he adds, we only have so many days to get it done before this "earthly visit" is over.
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