Revitalising my creative spirit

In our society, we often categorise people in one of two ways; creative or logical thinker. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering which category I fall into. As a child, when we went on holiday I would want to sit under the parasol in the shade doing my book of sudokus (can you tell I’m risk-averse?!). But I also loved reading; I remember going to stay with my aunty in Australia for 5 weeks and popping to her local library to borrow classics such as Rebecca by Daphe du Maurier. I’d wait on the most tentery of tenterhooks for the next book in the Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging series by Louise Rennison (highly intellectual reading). In high school, maths was my favourite subject. I was addicted to solving the puzzles and riddles that seemed so opaque and meaningless; I slowly learnt to understand and love the cryptic language of numbers and symbols. At age 18, I bought a DSLR camera, inspired by a boyfriend of the time, and found myself delighting as I stopped to see the world more closely and attempt to capture just an ounce of its beauty. Looking back, while I was no professional, I was capturing what felt real and meaningful to me. I remember one shot of some colourful graffiti contrasted by some beautiful, wild flowers; the juxtaposition of the markings of the modern-day human against the forces of nature struck me as holding some sort of message, although I wasn’t sure what.

Dried flowers on driftwood from Lake Wanaka

All of this to say that it’s become clear to me, as is already well-documented, that humans are not able to be put into the neat boxes of ‘creative’ and ‘uncreative’. It’s only in the past year or so that that has become clear to me. I think the thing about creativity is we imagine that it belongs to a certain type of person. Maybe it’s someone with paint-splattered dungarees and long wavy hair piled effortlessly on top of their head, smoking a cigarette and letting the paintbrush ‘speak to them’. Maybe it’s someone lying in bed with their lover on a Tuesday morning as the sun filters in through the curtains, stopping only to photograph them and feed them grapes (haha). Either way, our idea of a ‘creative person’ is ingrained in our psyche, and it isn’t a white man in a business suit discussing stock options and rental property investments. But his creative genius lies within! While our ‘creative person’ stereotypes exist for a reason, you can be any way and look any way and still be creative. It’s in our bones! Creativity is really just seeing opportunities, experimenting, and coming up with new ideas – you can do that with a spreadsheet as easily as a paintbrush.

Beautiful dried bouquet

So here marks the start of my creative revitalisation. I’ve felt a creative energy of some sort building up over the past six months or so but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I felt like doing something but I couldn’t work out what. The reality is, you can start anywhere. Drop the pressure and the expectations of creating some beautiful masterpiece of wonder that changes the world. I decided to just pick up where I left off. I grabbed my camera and went off on a walk without my phone (I’m breaking up with it, it’s great). And I’m starting this new blog for myself, creating whatever comes to mind!