Yesterday I was confronted with the idea that reinvention (whether it is radical or mere tweaking) is a creative process, and not a checklist that I can add tasks to in order to cross them off. I am still trying to wrap my head around everything that developing an iterative creative process will entail; however, the idea of creativity was very much on my mind last night. I am not a creative savant, but I definitely enjoy creative pursuits. For awhile I was excited about making cheese (and, indeed, I would love to dabble in cheese making more than I actually do), I want to learn to sew in order to create fabulous Howl’o’ween costumes for my dogs, I love to throw parties and cook fabulous things for our friends, and I have a couple of story ideas for books.
What I notice most as I write up my list of creative interests is that while I enjoy them, I am (very) spotty in the execution of them. Does this mean that I lack passion and drive? Or just time? It may be a little bit of both, but I definitely need to explore this train of thought more thoroughly. I know that I derive a great sense of satisfaction from sharing home-made mozzarella with friends, or when people get excited when we invite them to one of our parties. I like it when people have a good time based on something that I have engineered.
My grandfather worked his entire career on the assembly line at Fisher Body. He says that work is what you do to support your family, and it doesn’t have to be creative. It is what you do because you have to. He came home and satisfied his need to be creative in the workshop. I have not spent a lot of time thinking about creativity, which means that up until now I have probably been following in my grandpa’s footsteps. This is not a bad thing, my grandpa is an amazing man and I love him dearly. I do think that I want to shatter this thought paradigm and bring more creativity to my daily routine.