unleash my creativity

I signed up for an in-person writing class today. Two hours on Saturdays for eight weeks. I haven’t been in an actual writing class for more than a decade. I’m trying not to be scared but it’s hard. Hopefully this will be the challenge I need.

I always get stumped early into the process. My “mind” kicks in and says that this is all woo-woo b.s. and if I just had discipline I could do what I wanted to do (and as a corollary that I must not “really” want it because I’m not able to do it).

I have to push passed this or I will be stuck right where I am forever.

I have to remember that my creativity isn’t always, or even always best, expressed through writing and that without other activities (yes, at thirty[mumble] I own coloring books) the writing gets dry.

...but it’s hard with no juice.

I’m enervated. Drained. Depleted. Completely, utterly dry.

Creativity requires passion and juiciness. I can’t even write my birthday down correctly on the driver’s insurance form for work.

Yet, I’ve done morning pages 4 mornings out of five this week and writing exercises 3 mornings out of those four.

That’s a start.

I’m adopting this goal because, like taking risks, I need to be more creative in my life and I just realized recently that creativity isn’t necessarily expressed in the standard ways (art, music, writing, dance, performance) but in myriad ways:

• thinking up a new dish to cook (dreamsicle cake anyone?)
• finding a way to work within existing parameters to solve a problem
• training yourself out of bad habits by encouraging good habits
• resisting the advertising that tells you that if you don’t buy this, eat that, drive this, wear those, watch this, listen to this other, or think a certain way you are less-than.

All of these things are ways in which creativity is expressed that are not always recognized as such.

I want the freedom to get dirty, to use lots of orange and paint with my fingers, to sprinkle my writing with daring verbs, to experiment with color and sound and pictures, to wear t-shirts that I designed that make people think. All of that takes creativity