Some of my best ideas come in the shower. Characters show up, share stories I couldn’t have guessed. I get downloads for blogs, word for word. Answers to puzzles, insights on questions, things to explore. The shower’s my creative power spot, and this morning I got this: Creativity’s not for sissies.
I was pondering a comment by a client about how people dismiss her as a writer. “I feel bothered when people tell me it’s my hobby,” she wrote. “It means more to me than that.”
I knew no amount of words would help. I could say it’s about them, what they don’t understand, and it wouldn’t matter. Because I get it. This expression of hers is a diamond in her genetic code. It’s serious stuff. Even for hobbyists. We gotta be like ducks, let stuff like this roll off our backs. It takes courage to be creative!
We have to accept we see things most others don’t.
And may see in ways others can’t comprehend. We’re often called weird, different, flighty. . .or creative, with special emphasis as if it’s an explanation for something not right. Until our weird gets redefined. . .think Steve Jobs or Iris Apfel. What to do? Own It. I mean Capital O. Capital I. The world needs our creativity.
Sometimes it takes time to find our Creative Soul Song.
I’ve been an artist my entire life. My mother said from the time I could hold a pencil, the thing I loved most was to draw. But Writing is where I landed. It’s the Soul Song that answers Yes for me every time. Everything in my life feeds it. We have to be patient, and feed our creative spirit.
Your creative life is your life in the real world.
We carry multiple realities at once – the one from our creative spirit, and the one living in the real world. They’re both as real as real can be to us.
Creativity takes loving yourself, unconditionally.
Whether our signature is visual, movement, words, music, biz, solutions, gardens, healing, name it, it’s part of who we are. We love it, we gotta love ourselves. It always amazes me folks think the book easy to read was easy to write if you’re a writer. Or that painting was done because someone has talent. That dance done so beautifully by a natural dancer. The smart biz person lucked out. And the master gardener just knows. Yes.Yes. And the truth is skill & getting good at our craft took digesting a metaphorical million page manual. And hours of practice. All ongoing. + It’s passion (heart) and belief (mind) that keep us creatively alive. The fantasies persist in people’s mind, even when we tell them.
Deadly potholes are everywhere, despite our accomplishments and triumphs.
They’re always there, and we fall in. Again and again. Comparisons, doubts, fears, performance anxiety, questioning, fraud syndrome, feeling selfish for taking time to create, the failure that erases the long line of stellar works. Like a secret society, those who’ve been there & understand are the ones to get us out.
We want our work seen and valued.
And that often takes what seems like unfair stamina, persistence, self love, loneliness, giving pieces of ourselves away, and getting up from a fall too many times. The hidden hours learning, daydreaming, envisioning, honing and refining are discounted when someone asks how long it took, or asks for a discount when they pay. When our work’s dismissed or someone says anyone can do that, vs. asking, “What does your writing mean to you?’ it hurts. Even with a thick skin.
We humans were all born to create. A home, a family, a path thru life….and some of us, well, we swirl to a special tune we hear, offering something unique to the world in the process. New ways of seeing, an experience that awakens, enlivens, and touches others. It takes a fierce heart. And it’s worth every minute of it.
“I always felt that writing––it just felt magical to me; it felt like alchemy: that you could take mere words and end up creating a feeling or a sensation or evoke a memory.”
~ Susan Orlean
How does your creative spirit show up? What does it mean to you?
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