On Creativity and Neurosis

Creativity. If you have it, you need to use it. I didn't believe this or know this for most of my life, until recently. It never occurred to me that not using my gifts as a writer, artist, dancer, crafter, and yes chef was actually doing harm to me. I thought, arrogantly, that I could avoid the "tortured" life of an artist (how cliche would it be to live that life?) simply by not being an artist.

I know now that just the opposite is true. I was born with many gifts, but I wasn't born with the drive to use them. Or rather, I wasn't born with some sense that I should use them. Some of my friends were. And because of that, they have pursued their talents in school and in their careers and it is paying off. I didn't. And because of that, part of me is not as fully developed as it could be by now. I'm trying to change that.

Due to an early trauma with the creation of my first work of writing, a short story I wrote in second grade, creating isn't easy for me. It's actually painful. But what's more painful is being stagnant in my life, being only partially developed, being deformed in soul.

I'm working on it. Through this blog and my fledgling handmade undertaking, I try to do something creative for a little while each day. Sometimes I fail. I haven't quite made it to the point where I can spend all my free time doing what I really want and need to be doing, but I'm getting there.

I am a slow processor, and I have to think about things. A lot. It can be annoying, and I recently read research that says we're less happy when our minds wander. So I'm trying to be more busy while being focused and mindful. It seems like a paradox when all my yoga teachers and religious teachers say to be less busy, to slow down. In fact, everything I surround myself with (yoga, the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, Real Simple magazine) points to the conclusion that I am already on a higher plane of being. I spend much of my time in a meditative state. But the truth is that I have to come down from that plane a little in order to be more successful in my life.

So in this blog, not only will I try to stay on topic, which is mainly how I deal with significant mental illness, but also expand that topic to creativity and how I'm trying to heal. I'll continue to post my insights and this will not become a craft tutorial blog. It will still be writing based but I want to update it more often. It's hard to do that when it's only about one small, albeit influential, segment of my life. Think, "Holly's eye-view."

Thanks to all who read this. You're helping me heal too.