It Is Really Hard To Be Creative. Really. I Mean it.

THIS IS KATHERINE TODAY.


I was at a work retirement party for my boss at his favorite Mexican place the other day and a colleague noticed I ordered pozole.  I like pozole.  She asked me what was in it and why I liked it and then she made a comment about my hair and then I braced myself for her next comment.

Sure enough, the financial leader of our educational department, drew back a little and said, "Katherine--you are just so creative."  At work it's a comment that often comes up when I share an idea that isn't a normal approach to the current educational trauma facing us.  Sometimes someone will smile and tell me that I think outside the box.  My ideas are generally not taken seriously.

There was a time comments about my creativity made me proud or happy or something different than they make me feel now.  The comments make me nervous now.  They make me worry that I am not working at being creative enough.  

There is a perception problem here.  From my side ordering pozole and having a noticeable haircut have nothing to do with my creativity.  I like pozole.  I think the financial leader of our department might like pozole if she tasted it too.  I like my haircut--obviously.  It doesn't mean I am creative though.  It just means that I am lazy.

The thing is--I am creative.  And it has nothing to do with my taste in food or what my haircut looks like.    I like that I am creative.  I spent years in graduate school learning to define creativity and to teach it and to nurture it in myself.  It was and it is hard work to be creative.  Part of being creative is having task commitment.  Task commitment is hard.  You have to keep trying to do stuff you suck at.  You have to create rituals for your creative outlets so they don't get sucked into the day-to-day vacuum of your life.  You have to learn content and skills and aim for production and try processes that scare you to death and take risks that people might decide you are creative.   It's just as hard, or maybe even harder, than filling an Excel spreadsheet.  Really.

That's the problem.  Others often see creativity differently.   Some see creativity as this little gift from the gods.   They think there are lucky creative souls who just go around creating stuff.  They think creativity is rather foolish and inefficient.  Being creative isn't cost effective.  Being creative is great if you create the company, but not so much if you are at the bottom of the heap.

Though I expend a huge amount of creative thought and energy coaching my teachers (I love that part of my job), most of my creative energy is devoted to knitting and these odd little drawings I do.  Both are mentally challenging, physically demanding, and spirtually mediative.  They keep me off the streets and a certain part of my soul sings better if I stick to my creative rituals.

Right now I am knitting happily and designing my next project.  Unless you know me pretty well, you might not realize that my knitting isn't the ugly Christmas sweater type.  Right now I am trying to "paint" by knitting lace.  I created a shawl meant to be an impressionistic painting of the opera house in Santa Fe that looked exactly what I imagined.  I'm pretty proud of that sucker.  It was hard work and took months of learning, and thinking, and knitting intricate stuff with intricate and tedious beading.  I did not just "whip it up."

Next up in the knitting world will be a Teton shawl filled with thunder and lightning.  It is my reaction to all the rain and storms we faced at Jenny Lake last summer.  I keep changing my mind about it's shape and lace design.  I wake up at night thinking about this.  There are hundreds of dollars in the yarn and beads.  There will be months and months of work.  I can't wait.

On the other hand, my little drawings are stalled right now.  They are simply ballpoint pen on small pieces of brochure weight matte paper.  Nothing fancy.  They are small haikus of my life or geometric efforts to settle my head.  They are what I do in the morning to become me again.

My little drawings are in the stuck stage.  I have spent close to two years with purposes in mind--an alphabet, numbers, the names of Samantha and Brooklyn--these drawings were for others and were going to be gifts someday.  For my soul, there were some drawings of Wyoming based on memories or photos.  For two years, for most mornings, I got up, drank coffee and drew for as long as my focus and time would allow.  And then, one day,  the alphabet and the numbers and the names were done.  And then there were no new purposes.  I stopped drawing.  I have been looking for new purposes ever since.

I am close to a new idea.  Jim helped by pointing me to a perfect poem.  We will see.  I have tried to draw this week.  That's a start.  I'm feeling a window opening.  It's just so hard to look for something to look at when I'm living in a visual world.  It is really hard to be creative.  Really.  I mean it.