Confession Thursday: Most Creative People

Dear Reader,  

I read this interesting article  Why Creative People Sometimes Make No Sense and I realized how much I relate to it.

It's 9 ways of how creative people don't make sense, are a paradox, or effed up.  Or maybe this is everyone, creative or not, we are all full of opposites.

Here are a few I related to--

#3 

Most creative people combine both playfulness and productivity, which can sometimes mean 

both responsibility and irresponsibility. “Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, 

most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not.” 

Usually this perseverance occurs at the expense of other responsibilities, or other people.

I confess I have put my writing over: chores, laundry, shopping for food, and some friendships.

I confess I have actually not been caught up on laundry in over fifteen years.  When I was younger, 

I would throw out my clothes and buy new ones instead of washing them. I learned this from a guy

friend I worked with at Eddie Bauer who was always dressed well.

Looking back, I was the most wasteful and irresponsible with money when I had 
the least amount of it.

I confess there is not much I'd rather be doing than writing or creating.  I have X number of hours a day,

 I hate wasting time on housework.  Though my house is pretty tidy, mostly because I'm always 

donating things to Goodwill.  Always straightening up while listening to podcasts or books
on tape.

#9 Most creative people’s openness and sensitivity exposes them to a large amount of suffering 

and pain, but joy and life in the midst of that suffering. “Perhaps the most important quality, 

the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process 

of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would 

write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice 

as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial

 laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.”

I confess each week for me is a rollercoaster of bliss and suffering.  It's falling in love and breaking up

all in the same hour.  It's crying for no reason and just wanting to write everyone a personal letter

of how much I appreciate them.  Sometimes I do.  Sometimes I write to someone in the past as if

we'd spoken on a few days ago.  Most of my letters begin, "I know this is weird..."

Sometimes in summer I'm better, I'm more "just happy."  I have asked my family, "Why don't we live 

in Key West?"  I confess, if I lived in a nice climate, I'd never get any writing done.  Or I'd write

about kittens and rainbows.  Much of my work has a gray element, that is the fog of my hometown

lingering over every page.  I can be Elvis Costello's sulky girl, the hazy-faced poet lacking
Vitamin D.

But I'm good with it.  I love the joy and the melancholy.  I love small breakdowns

to remind me I'm alive.


Amen.

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