Pieces

I've always been a creative thinker. My mind has always been a chaotic mess of great ideas.

Somehow in High School and University while everyone was messing around and "discovering themselves", I was taking myself way too seriously and not getting anywhere.

I haven't trained myself to let that creativity flow the way it has the potential to do. Actually, I suppose it's a lack of training I need; an un-training, to stop trying to fit my ideas into a practical mold. Creativity isn't practical. It would be silly if it was.

Over the last year, since I've been on my own, I've been working really hard at listening to all the silly voices in my head and using them to create things.

The problem is, there are so many of them, it's hard to hear one over the other. I focus on one idea for a few minutes, hours, days, sometimes weeks.. and I work really hard at it. Then another voice up there becomes louder than the one I've been listening to, and takes over. Suddenly I'm on another project, in another discipline, from another world.

What I've learned recently, is that it's all part of the process. Instead of looking at unfinished projects as failures or laziness or lack of motivation, I have started to look at them as small discoveries. Little clues along a path that may lead to something amazing or nothing at all - but I'm learning all the while.

It's a liberating thought, and it's hard to stick to. I'm constantly anxious about where I am going and how I'll make this trivial thing (a painting, a photo, a story, a song), into some kind of a socially acceptable success.

This is a constant struggle. Success is so relative, I know that.
But taking myself too seriously is ingrained in my head; it's the loudest voice of all.