Friendship and Creativity

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”

-Ray Bradbury-

There is nothing more important than passion. Most people think ambition is the best quality to have if you want to achieve success. I don’t think that is necessarily true. I believe ambition is but a small portion of passion. In order to truly pursue creativity, you must have deep and undisturbed passion. You must be willing to sacrifice any and all preconceived notions in order to pursue what you love.

Your family may not understand your passions, but that’s okay. In fact, that’s quite normal. But your truest loves, truest friends, will not only love your dreams, but they too will believe in them. And honestly, if they don’t, they may not truly be your friends.

Luckily, I have friends that do understand and support me. This is definitely one of the most amazing blessings in the world. It makes those that don’t believe in me easier to be around and tolerate. So cling to your passions, not matter what they are. But don’t forget to cling to those friends too. They make every passion worth pursuing.

Every. Single. Fucking. Passion.

Writer’s Block

The truth about being a creative person is that you are only truly happy in two settings, when you are being complemented and/or when you are being creative. All other times are pretty much awful.

If you have a true desire to be creative, that’s a beautiful thing. If you choose to pursue a creative field as a career, that’s a terrible idea. I’m not saying this to make you choose otherwise, because if there’s anything I’ve learned about the creative is that they are stubborn. They will remain as idealistic as possible until reality after reality tears them apart. So, what makes it worth it?

I can’t speak for all creative types. I can’t even speak for all writers. For me, it’s the simply feeling I have when I’m so caught up in story that I can’t think of anything else. That moment where my realities and my story’s reality switch places and instantaneously I am thinking more like my characters than I am like myself. That feeling of catharsis that takes a hold of your being. So who am I outside of that person? Well, that’s a complicated person that I don’t really like to deal with as often as may be healthy. 

Perhaps that is why I hate writer’s block so much. When I’m truly stumped, I feel so frustrated. I feel like I’ve lost touched with that one part of my existence I feel so comfortable with. I feel like I’ll never truly understand my own story. If I don’t understand my characters through and through, how will the reader? If I don’t see the theme clearly, how will my reader? If I don’t make my message one of interest and authenticity, how will my reader? They probably won’t. This is what stops me. This is what stops most artists. 

I am so scared of imperfection and judgement that I run away from finishing anything. One of my goals, resolutions if you will, for 2012 was to have a finished manuscript. I don’t know if that will happen or not, but at the pace I’m going, I probably won’t have a manuscript by the time I’m 50. 

So where do I go from here? I write. It may be awful, but I write. Today, for example, I sat trying to write one particular paragraph of a story I’m working on, and I just hated it. In fact, after almost an hour of trying to perfect it, I ended up deleting the whole thing. Why? Because I am a perfectionist by nature. I am a perfectionist in life, so why wouldn’t I be one in my own writing? Now, that doesn’t mean that all my writings are perfect. If only! This simply means, before I put any of my creative material out for judgement of strange eyes, I usually check my piece quite a few times. I’m still capable of making mistakes, but I hope to keep it as perfect as possible.

This can lead to problems for the creative type. I’m an orderly creative type. I’m organized with my thoughts. I often plot out stories before writing them. I don’t know if this is a habit I picked up in school or if I simply like having direction. Either way, this is how I start most of my stories. 

However, as I said before, this can lead to problems for creative types. There’s perfect grammar, perfect sentence transitions, perfect format, but there is NOT perfect creativity. 

Creativity is subjective. Try to be easy with it. Write something down. Don’t throw it away if you hate it. Keep it in a separate file. Come back to it later. Maybe you can use it for another project down the road. Don’t try to create perfection with your art. Find pleasure in the catharsis of it all. Don’t forget the joy you felt when you first wrote/painted/photographed/etc. 

Find pleasure in creativity, every day. 

Life After Graduation

This Saturday, March 10th, will mark exactly 3 months since I graduated college. In my last semester of college, I felt like time was passing so quickly. Apparently, the velocity rises as when you graduate. Who knew?

Even more so, who knew that life after graduation would be exactly opposite of what you intended? I figured, “Hey, I did everything according to the status quo. I made great connections. I have great references. I graduated with honors. Finding a job will be a cinch!”  WRONG.

I can’t help but wonder what it is I am doing wrong. I’ve got a great resume, a pretty face, terrific references. I thought that was all you needed. WRONG AGAIN.

You need so much patience. You have to keep yourself positive, regardless of how hard things get, how many rejection letters you receive, no matter what happens. This has been the greatest challenge. REACTION.

So, how do you react in the face of failure? Do you mope away in your room listening to 90′s breakup songs due to your lack of employability? Do you give up completely and resort to living in your mom’s basement for the rest of your life? NO.

You keep going. You work your ass off. You remember that the economy sucks right now, so you have to put twice the effort. And you ‘never ever ever give up.’ Easier said than done right? RIGHT.

I’ve found myself slipping away these last few months. I keep thinking about my last week of finals. I was constantly daydreaming about life after graduation. With a cartoon dream cloud above my head, I thought the following:

1. I’ll have more time to write!

2. I’ll focus more on my graduate school portfolio!

3. I’ll make more money at my big-girl job!

4.I’ll read more!

5. I’ll work out more!

6.I’ll conquer the world!

SORT OF.

Some of the things I daydreamed about have and/or are  in the process of coming true:

1. I do have more time to write. I’m even taking a weekly creative writing workshop. I’ve been organizing, writing, and rewriting various short stories. I’ve been studying the art of short stories. Writing without deadlines has been so liberating.

2. I have been focused on my graduate schools portfolio, but perhaps I haven’t been focused enough. Most of my days are spent perfecting my writing sample drafts. I’ve been able to be more open minded in researching and selecting programs. There’s still huge chunks of my portfolio missing, and while December seems far away, I know I have to keep working if I want a solid portfolio.

3. Making money has not been successful. Just ask my bank account. Oh, it’s quite depressing how short on money I am right now. I’ve been applying religiously for months, yet I’ve found nothing. I always imagined I’d have so much fun after graduation. Guess what? Fun costs money. No matter what you say. It does. Even if it’s a $5 Starbucks hangout. That’s $5 I am sadly not going to get back.

4. This has probably been the most relaxing, peaceful, me-time activity I’ve had since graduation. I’m reading the books I’ve always said I would but didn’t. My first book was I Pass Like Night by Jonathan Ames. After finishing that wonderfully written book, I picked up The Fiction Writer’s Handbook by Hallie and Whit Burnette (one of the best books on writing I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading) and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (one of the most visual stimulating books I’ve ever read).

5. Working out. Working out. What can I say, when it comes to physical movement, I am more lazy than I thought. I joined a gym in late January, and for a while, I was keeping up a great workout schedule. Yoga, cycling, and sauna. Recently, I started running for the first time in probably years. It’s been tricky. I started a run-walk program for beginning runners. Turns out when you’re skinnier, you can run easier. When you’ve put on the freshmen fifteen for 4 straight years, it’s not as easy to keep up that adrenaline. And it saddens me to be this honest, because I really wish I had made more of my physical routine the last few months, but alas, I am lazy. And whether you know this about me or not, I am very insecure with how my body has changed over the last few years. When I began college, I was a full 6 pant sizes smaller. I fall asleep thinking about being that size again.

6. I haven’t quite conquered the world. In order to do this, I have to accomplish all the goals I want in life. This is a process. This is perhaps one of the most important things I’ve learned as a post-graduate. It’s a journey. You can’t give up halfway. You can’t give up before you start. You have to keep mentally motivating yourself. You have to set small goals and then medium size goals, and then before you know the world will be conquered, if even on a little level.

I know what you’re thinking. Overwhelming, huh? Yeah. It’s ok to allow yourself to be overwhelmed sometimes. It’s even ok to be stressed. What’s not ok is becoming stagnant. That’s one thing I completely dread—waking up in the morning to find I haven’t done anything in weeks. That’s why I am writing this. It’s been almost 3 months since I began this journey.

Have I accomplished everything I dreamed of? No.

Have I accomplished some things? Yes.

Am I doing well in some areas? Yes.

Is there room for improvement? ALWAYS.

 

Old Books

The smell of old books bring back lingering thoughts of my childhood. It wasn’t the sweetest smell. It wasn’t even the strongest smell. It was a faint smell, yet if I close my mind, even for a second and think back, I’m there in an instant.

They say the sense of smell is the strongest sensory connected to memory. That must be true, because just as I think, even for a moment, so many thoughts cross my vacant mind.

Suddenly, memories of libraries and discount books stores race through my mind. Late afternoons, when school was out, I found myself spending hours in the library. I remember the small library in my hometown. I would enter through the thick oak doors, thinking that every book in the world must be found on these very shelves. And all I could think is that I wanted to read every single one of them.

I never quite stayed in one section. I’d meander through the isles filled to the rim with books, going from the children’s section to the adult section. My hand touching every book in the shelf, until, finally, I found the one worth taking home.

I’d lay there at night, with the book tucked under my pillow, waiting for me to read it. It was bedtime, and I became a pro at pretending to be asleep. My mother would creak the door open just to make sure I had fallen asleep. I lay there with my eyes almost completely closed, until she closed the door.

When she left and house was still and the sirens of the streets ceased, I’d slip my small delicate hands under the pillow and grab ahold of the thick warm pages.

Yet my memory doesn’t trace back to touch. Rather, the faint yet pungent smells of those warm pages are what my mind often falls in love with. Each book smelled so different, yet all of them shared one common scent. They smelled old.

Curled up in my wool blanket, I held my tiny flashlight in my mouth as I quickly found the page I’d last read. A small leaf bookmark hinted just past the edge of the slick page. I flipped the book open, sat up with my back against the headboard, and lean in to the book.

Traces of oak and pine caressed my small button nose. I think back to all the people that had carried this book before me. What smells had they left? Did they too smell the oak and pine? I read a few pages and drifted off. The book lay across my chest in deep sleep as I dreamt of the next book I’d take home.

Good II

Lilacs, lilies, and daisies bloom

as she walks through the garden  she once knew:

a garden of childhood

innocence through beauty.
And there the earth stood,

not quite still.

The constant pull

of gravity

is getting her down.
Reminiscing

of childhood naivety—

how she wanted the world

to change it’s reality.
From grown to growing,

like a small garden,

cultivating in the love of others.
Now, in adulthood,

gravity always wins.
If only they could

Know that in the end

when the siren ceases

and all are not distracted

greed

will be replaced with

need of those less privileged.
We will not trickle down.

We will man-up.
We will share this world.

Equality

will not just be an idea,

but a truth,

a reality.
From the dreamer

to the realist
We will all believe in doing good

The Stars

The sight of the stars is a different kind of beauty than we’re used to. It’s not as sexy as a woman’s long luxurious legs. It’s not as heartwarming as a child’s soft simplistic smile.

When you’re in the big fluorescent city you can usually only spot a few. The brightest ones, maybe five of them, if you’re lucky. But when you’re in the country, all you can see are the stars. Everything else seems to disappear.

And all the while, with the sky full, you can’t quite make out those five stars. You’ve misplaced them. You start to wonder if you ever really saw them in the city sky. Maybe they were just a figment of your imagination. Maybe, in your mind’s eye, you really wanted to see them. But while you’re in the country, with probably thousands of stars right above you, your mind can’t stop wandering back to those five stars.

You look up and see the North Star. You take solace in the fact that this, the North Star, being as bright as it is, must have been one of the five city stars. Finally, your mind is at peace, and you gently close your eyes, the cool wind flying through your hair and brushing against your still face.

Making and Breaking of Friendships

Albert Camus once said, “Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” I like this quote for two reasons: 1- Albert Camus is a genius. 2- it’s brutally honest.

Remember when you were in elementary school and friendships were simple? I mean, all you really had to do was walk up to someone and ask them to be your best friend; these are the making of friendships.

I remember my first reality check with friendship. I was in the 6th grade and there was this girl, I’ll call her Emma. Emma played with all my best friends, but for some reason, she didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Wanting to understand this situation better, I sought help from my favorite philosopher, my dad. My dad had a knack for explaining the hard things to me. So, there we were sitting in the living room, when my dad had to explain to me, that not EVERYONE had to be my friend. Then he told me a story that stuck with me until this very moment.

He explained to me that if you can count on your fingers just ONE really good friend in your life, then you are lucky, because some people don’t even have that. He explained to me that my mom was his ONE really good friend, and he didn’t regret that at all.

There are some friends that come in to your life with purpose. You don’t know it right away, but you look back ten years and realize that you wouldn’t be the same person without their influence. There’s a soulful connection between you. You could go without speaking for months and pick up like you hadn’t skipped a beat. You could move to a whole new city, thinking you’d lose your friendship, yet, you get closer.

There are other friends that are fun. That may sound shallow, but so are those friendships. I don’t know how many friends that have come in and out of my life in a blink. You had that one really deep conversation with them, and once in a while you wonder if they still remember your existence.

In my college experience, I think it really boiled down to those friends that bettered you and those that wouldn’t let you bud. After experiencing the ups and downs of college friendships, I’ve realized that friendship no longer lies along the lines of black and white. There’s gray everywhere!

I had a friend once; we’ll call her Britta. Britta and I were really close friends near the end of high school. We liked the same music; we both appreciated arts and culture; we valued literature. These were the ties of our high school friendship. And at that point, I thought they were strong ties. After all, the arts have the potential for making a huge impact and creating soulful connection between two friends.

I graduated, went to college, worked, while Britta was still finishing up her last year of high school. With my now busy schedule, I still made sure to make time for our friendship. Apparently, this wasn’t quite enough. Why? Because Britta was so used to the type of friendship we had when walking the same halls of high school—-the type of friendship where you saw each other every day—-the type where you had free time most days.

As many of you know, after starting college and working, it is a lot harder to balance your friendships. Britta did not understand this because she was still in high school.

Now, I tell you this long story to say this, I’ve had friendships with almost the exact same scenario with other friends, and become even closer with them. Why? Well, I hate to use clichés, but “absence CAN make the heart grow fonder.” It doesn’t always. But it CAN. This is dependent on many things: your wish to keep that friendship, your understanding of individuality, and your love for that person. There’s much more I can add here, but for now, I think I’ve written as much as I can on the subject of friendship.

Just try to keep this in mind. Many writers try to define friendship, and to that I laugh. Friendship is a form of love, and love cannot be defined.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a try…

Graduation is Over.

Exclamation filled the seats as we entered the room. Cap, robes, and tassels adorned our accomplished flesh. Our body. Our vehicle. Our destination? Unknown. For all we knew, we’d cross that stage, and apparently our lives would never be the same.  Imagine the pressure that gave the wooden-paneled stage. It’s job was to support us as we walked from one side of the stage to the other. After that, we were on our own.

The second I walked through those tall, French doors, my eyes found my family. It was as if there was some sort of magnetic field in my heart that was solely attracted to their comfort.

After seeing my family smiling proudly, you’d think I’d become more calm. Wrong. I grew more anxious for my turn. Fortunately, despite my last name, I was in the first row to graduate. And it all happened in a blur of a moment. And although I remember almost every second of the event, I mainly remember my thoughts. They were blank. While my friend beside my realized she had forgotten to lock her car, I had realized nothing. I thought, perhaps she was worrying too much. Then, I thought, maybe I wasn’t worrying quite enough. But by the time I thought this, it was my turn, and I had bigger things to think about—like not tripping. 

To be completely honest, that day went by so fast that the idea of being a a “college graduate” didn’t really cross my mind. Racing from home, the ceremony, celebratory lunch, and back home to the family dinner, there was very little time to sit and contemplate. Not until the day after did it really sink in.

I was a college graduate. It took me roughly 4 1/2 years, but I had finally finished. All of this sunk in while seated in a van headed to Joplin, Missouri the day after graduation. I finished. And maybe that’s most of what college was—a test of patience. And yes, we would all receive a piece of paper proving our patience. This tiny piece of paper would tell the world that we deserved things and were qualified for things we weren’t a month before receiving it. It was of great importance. However, that paper wasn’t the great accomplishment. The most significant accomplishment in graduating was having that feeling that you finished something. Whether you did it as well as you’d like to have didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that you finished. But why did you finish? Why did you work so hard?

This was  not completely actualized until I had reached Joplin. For my age, I am a well-traveled woman. But I’ve never traveled this far for more than vacation sake. I was there in Joplin with a group of fellow Texas Wesleyan students and the school chaplain to help with the devastating repairs necessary for tornado relief. This was how I’d spend my first week as a graduate. Not partying. Not sleeping in. But doing something for people who have gone through something I’ve never had to face. These people in Joplin lost a considerable amount of their belongings, including their homes and sentimental pieces of their lives. And even greater, sometimes life through the several casualties.

On my first day, we worked on a house for a family that wanted nothing more than to be in their house for Christmas.  I stepped outside for fresh air. While on my break, I looked at the surrounding landscape. Admittedly, tears started to swell in my eyes.  The decapitated houses, vacant hospitals and demolished children schools made me realize the impermanence of the world on a level I’d never felt before. How was it possible that something as small and seemingly insignificant as wind could literally tear the ground beneath your feet, and to those that were affected, how could you move on?

Unfortunately, I, like every fallible human, spent most of my college career worrying about petty things— relationships, grades, money, etc. And I can’t count how many times I’ve been told that others, even  at my university, had it much worse than I did.  I never thought that perhaps those words had more than truth behind them. They had experience. I seek that experience so much. I hope to one day understand this complex world just a little bit better.

One of the days I was in Joplin, I was moved to another location with a friend to help rebuild a military woman’s house in time for Christmas. I stepped outside and looked at the tall flag waving proudly, and the burnt, rusted cross from the church across the street. Both signs of hope, I suppose.

Before entering the house once more, my friend and I were asked to be interviewed by a camera man from the local ABC news station. I’ll never forget what the man asked me. He asked what I thought I’d get out of this trip, and honestly, I gave him a pretty generic answer, but afterwards, I kept thinking about how I really didn’t come there to gain something, although I did. I gained a a realization that everything in life —family, friends, and tangible objects were all impermanent. I have no idea how I would react if everything in my life was taken from me.  The few people I met in Joplin were so optimistic, so brave, and so humble about the entire experience. I have no idea how stable or calm I could be under those circumstances. All I know is that while on my trip to Joplin, I realized how fragile our lives are.

I may not know exactly what my life is going to look like now that graduation is over, but I’m excited to find out.  And even further, I know that whatever it is I end up doing in life, I’ll try my very best to remember that life is not our to keep, but ours to give. 

The flag and cross

Jubilee

The haves and have nots

divided between want and need

The have nots lack because of greed

while haves continue to be caught

in the lies we agreed on

The social normals

of our time

for their time

to all time

————————

The haves and have nots

can’t wait to be caught

in the Year of Jubilee

Or perhaps an idealistic thought

this is all that lingers

in my young mind

hoping to be set free

Constrains and tools of

thoughts and hopes for

want and need to

find the Year of Jubilee

The blank slab stands still

 

It is molded until finally spills

over into pieces it was never meant to be.

Shaping back together, finally

the sculptor tries to see its once perfect form