The first of my bloggy friends to come to my aid, Julie took my panicked, “Just write something about creativity!” and ran with it. – RD
I don’t know about you, but I am a creature of habit. Someone that likes a schedule, plans ahead and tries my hardest to avoid the surprises that may be around the corner of life. But there are always those times that you cannot plan for, that are inevitably the best thing for you. It’s those unexpected times where you wish you had your pen and paper… and sometimes just the ability to write.
…Car rides where suddenly my imagination takes over and I am the star of the show or in the middle of a love triangle.
…Moments laying on the sand where I am whisked away to another country and exploring all that there is of life there.
…Silence where I can close my eyes and grieve the loss of someone or something close to me in my imaginary world.
I find my creativity in the little things around me. From the birds flying past my head at speeds I can only fathom to the turtle slowly working its way back into the water. For me, most of the time at least, the creativity does not come in the moments that I see these things happening around me… but rather when I’ve resumed my structured life.
Recently I went on a vacation from my job and relaxed at a cottage on a lake with my family. During this time away, I desired to be able to write… to discover a new story within me… but it wouldn’t come. I wrote a little bit here and there, but could feel that the creative part of me was somewhere else. While I had thought that this relaxed environment would have been good, it stifled the words from being able to flow.
Honestly? This scared me. Thoughts of doubt abounded in my head. Am I not a writer after all? How can I be in this beautiful place and not have the words for a story come easily to me as it does so many other times in my life? I sat and pondered this for three days. I didn’t have the words.
But upon my arrival home, and the structure of a normal weekend resumed, the words began to flow. I remembered the hummingbirds buzzing quickly around me to their feeders and the sounds of small waves on the shore minutes after a boat sped past on the lake. While the story that emerged had nothing to do with what I saw or experienced, the words came back to me. Abundantly. Easily. Beautifully.
While I know that each of us has creativity within us, I learned that, for me at least, being away from my structure and life… or at least the noise of the city around me… brings me to a foreign place where I need to take a break from writing and being creative.
And you know what? That’s ok.
I now know that being away from my writing doesn’t make it disappear or lower its quality, the words are simply stored in a special place for later when the brain starts to process it all and the fingers can type.
And maybe the peace of being away from it all brings me to a new place of creativity and free writing when the words do start to flow again.
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Julie is a single 30-something who writes about discovering who she’s meant to be while documenting her weight loss journey ups and downs. She blogs at Dutch Being Me and tweets {excessively} at @JulieDutch… and spends too much time obsessing over where her next Diet Coke is coming from.
