Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

Where has this been all my life? I think the stories have been waiting for me to hear them again.

It’s interesting–and sometimes tragic–what life does to creativity. Pictures have been going through my mind this morning of when I was young. Very young, pre-teens. If I didn’t have a book in my hands, I had a sketch pad or any blank piece of paper so that I could draw, sometimes out of my imagination but often trying to capture figures and forms from the book of paintings I had. My other constant was a pad and paper, or a notebook, or whatever I could find, so that I could write stories.

I remember one story in particular because I showed it to my mom and though her face blanched a little, she praised it like she did all my work. I grew up in Hollywood in the midst of the hippie generation and free love and all that and though I didn’t talk a lot, I listened closely to my older brother’s friends and to various adults and, of course, to other children. So my story was filled with sex (as far as I understood it at the time — I was about 9 or 10) and free love, and people sharing partners, men partnering with men and women with women, then sometimes switching off and all sorts of fun things. I had no idea at the time what gay, lesbian or bisexual was, but as my brother was gay and many of his friends also, it was just a natural part of life and relationships to me.

(I think, sometimes, people think I’m a bit of a prude because I rarely enter into the conversations about sex and sexuality and orgasms and all that. But it’s not prudishness, mostly; it’s boredom. Not only was I surrounded by peace and love and sexual freedom and all that during most of my childhood, for part of the time I attended a “free school”, Summerhill, where pretty much anything went, everyone talked about everything and any questions you had were answered, even if you never asked them.

Every generation “discovers” sex, but the generation before me not only discovered it, they never shut up about it. I was bored to tears with the topic by the time I hit my mid teens. Now, if it’s not happening to me, I simply don’t care.)

Anyway, I don’t have the story anymore and I’m pretty sure I’d die laughing if I read it today, but my mom… she just read it and smiled and told me I did a wonderful job. She never discouraged any of my art or creativity, or that of my brother. I don’t know what happened that I came to the conclusion that creating, in those ways, was not only a waste of time, but that I wasn’t any good at it. I don’t recall anyone actually telling me that, so I must have been the one to tell myself. Which is not surprising–I’m really good at discouraging myself.

But still, the creative instinct had to go somewhere. Once I got online it came out in the building of sites and communities. I loved it, and always had so many ideas of what to do. I wanted to build the perfect sites, and have them do this and that and the other thing. Even when one was done, I’d want to add this, or change that, or have this happen — why can’t this happen, and that do this instead?

In other words, I’m pretty sure I drove a number of people working with me absolutely batty. I love new ideas, but I don’t like to stick with them all the time. I like to put them out there and move on to the next new idea. Great if I had a lot of money or investors and people who wanted to do something but don’t know what to do. Not so great if you are me and my one friend who is willing to help me implement things (poor thing, she’s gotten the brunt of my “why don’t we do this!?” stuff.)

But… now that I have rediscovered writing, and have decided that, yes, I can write fiction, I realized something. This, I think, is what I have been looking for, and have been missing all this time. I am creating a world right now and having so much fun. And if I decide that this part of the world needs this, and doesn’t really need that anymore, it’s simply a matter of getting rid of one thing and writing another. I can let my imagination soar, change things on a whim, come up with new ideas every day and write them in and do all sorts of things all by myself.

I’m going to write about that (in non-scribbling form) and also about some of the things a wonderful commenter, Ivan, has been saying in the comments to this post. So much to think about, and I am so encouraged now.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2012 at 9:40 am and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.