Creativity

I’ve always wanted to be more artistic. My mom can draw beautifully and at seventeen earned a scholarship to study art in Italy, but chose to marry my dad instead. I remember getting really upset when she told me that. She noted that had she made the opposite choice I might not have been around. Fair enough. It still made me sad that coming out of this creative and capable a mom, I couldn’t draw to save my life.

In my experience creative people are never creative at just one thing. They may have an area of strength, whether it be painting or sculpture or saxophone, but they just think creatively. They look at life creatively. My mom has had over ten unrelated creative jobs in her lifetime. She can look at an empty space and imagine something there. Her head is a box of ideas.

A desire to appear more creative was what originally brought me into computers. Maybe I couldn’t draw to save my life but if I could get the computer to draw for me, wasn’t that also creative? In high school, I dreamt of working in big art galleries in Italy, renovating masterpieces. If I got really good at computers, I had a chance getting in that environment. I craved that environment.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about my pull towards creativity. Creative people represent so much of what I am not. People who are expressive. People who are comfortable in their own skin. People who live life day in and day out. People who define their own life. At least, that’s how I see it.

For me, the difference is between living life and going along with it. I was browsing through the Burning Man installations and feeling utter joy at the fact that these things exist. That people create works of art. That they add to the beauty of the world. That they have the guts to do what they love. To explore. To express. I guess being creative represents so much more to me. It represents freedom.

A form of freedom I’ve always wished to achieve.