Don't Stop Creating

Often I have to struggle with the balance of my creative impulse and stuff I need to do at work or at home. It is a struggle that I think most creative people have to deal with and is frankly just a part of our selves that we have to come to terms with. My own experiences with this struggle have been rather disastrous. My skills at drawing and writing were recognized early on in my youth. My parents encouraged me to pursue my gifts and helped me when they could. In high school and I took classes to foster and grow those talents, such as Creative writing and a plethora of art classes. The untapped well of my imagination was over flowing with ideas. I wrote screen plays, comics, drew everything under the sun and painted, sculpted, even created cast jewelry. It was a wonderful time but also one uninhibited by time or responsibilities.

In college is when it first became apparent that my creative impulse was a bit to strong. After barely surviving my first year I knew things had to change and I clamped down, I was in school for video production not doodling after all. Soon after school I had to strike out on my own, and bills and work suddenly were sucking up all my free time and motivation. Even my writing took a backseat during this time. So my passion took a backseat to school work and it was a decision that effects me even today. I found that my time wasn't being channeled into my work though, instead I found an endless parade of distractions that took just as much time and attention from my studies or my work.

Writing has long been a push for me here on the blog but it wasn't until a few years ago that I really started doing anything with it. Shortly after channeling my impulses into my writing projects I began drawing again. Both tasks were difficult at first but with time I managed to get both to an acceptable level. That is really the point of this whole thing, the skills we have are just that skills. They need to be used, polished and improved on a constant basis. If you take your talents and stuff them away in a box then they will collect dust, unused and useless to you. Without effort there is no improvement, no polish and the skills you once had will be dried up. Right now I am finally drawing at a higher level then I was in high school, but only barely. That took me years of effort and struggle and the same can be said of teasing out my writing abilities to the point they are at now.

All of this comes to mind because last night I sat down and pounded out a chapter in a brand new story. However for the past two months or my life has been consumed with getting the web page online and my writings took a back seat again. Last night I struggled to capture the imagery that flashed through my head. Reading back I can see that not all of my writing skills have fled, there are moments of good writing but they are surrounded by mediocrity. It happens fast, you fall out of habit or practice or something comes along and throws everything off base and you don't create. Then suddenly you find that the time once spent creating things is now spent doing something mundane like watching TV.

I am fortunate that I am impulsive enough to give into my creative urges pretty frequently. Previously writing lead me back to drawing. This time it is the other way around, as a series of sketches I did the past few weeks really inspired me to put the story down on paper.

This weekend I didn't do much but I did write again and I am currently cleaning up the images you see popping up here on the blog. Yes it is hard to put down a good, clean sentence right now but it is thoroughly satisfying as well, and after a week or two I suspect it will become easier again (but never easy). This week I am doing something new, taking my recent classes on Adobe Illustrator and putting them to good use, I will be dumping in a few of these sketches that inspired me to finally put this story to paper and will be coloring them on the computer. Ok, it's not entirely new, I've done it before, but that was with Photoshop and it's ilk. Soon I hope to be able to share them with you. Right now though it is exciting to finally see my talents and my passions merging with current technologies and in a way (since I use Illustrator at work) merging with my job. Hopefully in the future I won't have to quash my own impulses, instead maybe I will be allowed to be creative and work on work at the same time.

Bottom line. Don't stop creating, no matter what. Sayonara my friends.