Creativity

My Mom once told me that if I loved to write, I should write about everything. She was reading this book about an author who has all of these workshops for aspiring writers, and when the aspiring writers get to her workshop they've already for their first book published in their heads. The author always tells them that if they love to write, they should write about anything because that's the joy. Write about doing the dishes, write about folding laundry. That's what writers do.

Apparently this woman is a wonderful writer. Mom says she can make anything funny. The only time I'm ever funny successfully is when I'm trying to be serious. It comes out of the blue. I remember being the emcee of this awards dinner when I was a LAB RAT, and I was up there talking, trying to be serious. I don't even remember what I said but everyone laughed. It was a nice warm laugh, not like men laughing at a joke that would make me feel dirty. A bit later in the awards dinner, I said something else, and was again shocked by the laughter.

It's funny how that little success has stuck with me for so long. I remember Debbie coming up and saying, "we don't have a host, you have to do it". I thought being a host would be like taking one for the team, turns out, I found the funny. (Since then, I've mostly misplaced it. )

I love to write. I'll be at work thinking of things to write down and it's rough on me that I can't write them down right then. It's like if I don't get to a computer it's going to come pouring out of me some other way. The first thing I do when I get home is turn on the computer and write something. Most of the time I delete it again, because I don't think it's good enough, but after a try or two, I find something I like. When I sit down at my keyboard, my fingers start working, like magic. Words and ideas and phrases come bursting out of them, like water from a fountain.

I can't understand people who don't like to write, people who don't like to create. This is so much fun, why wouldn't you do this? The things we create in life are the things that are really ours, but they're also what we have to give. It eludes me that there's something inside of another person, something they could create and share and they choose not to. They choose to deprive the world of that gift.

For a long time, I drew tons and tons of pictures. I stopped one day because I thought I wasn't as good as everyone else at drawing. I wasn't really, but I still had something to offer. The day I stopped drawing was the day I started improving at the guitar. Creativity has to have somewhere to go. I plugged up one hole and it just found another outlet. How can people keep this up inside of them all day? I'm amazed they don't explode with wanting to get it all out.