Restless Creativity

Did you notice that I changed my blog a little? No reason. Just felt like it. A little restless creativity.

Most of what I do for work and fun involves creativity of some kind and sometimes I get restless. My friends and coworkers might laugh at this because they probably see me as consistant, almost boring. But I never get tired of trying to create something and sometimes I just change things for the sake of changing them.

I write, voice, produce and edit radio commercials for a living. I surround myself with music, sometimes editing it, other times playing it on the radio. My hobbies include photography and writing. My writing includes blogging, journal keeping, proposal writing and poetry. Sometimes I build things around the house, like storage units. If I had to describe who I am, using very few words and no job descriptions, I'd call myself a story teller.

Where do these creative interests come from? My Dad was an engineer and Mom was a housewife. In my younger days, before I obsessively analyzed every last element of my life, I would have stopped there and assumed my creativity was a fluke. How could I learn creativity from a man who designed plumbing systems for shopping centers and a woman who washed clothes and cooked meals for her kids?

Upon further reflection (or analysis), however, I see that I grew up surrounded by creativity. Part of my Dad's engineering and design job involved drawing plans and creatively locating pipes, restrooms, water fountains and fire sprinklers. Mom was in the same line of work at one time. Dad's hobbies included photography and furniture making; in his youth he played piano. When Mom wasn't doing housewife stuff, she was painting. Two of her five paintings that survived the Katrina flood are on the wall of my home office.

Mom and Dad both liked to tell stories. Dad wrote a short autobiography during the early days of his battle with Parkinson's because he wanted to chronicle as much of his life as he remembered before it would be lost to dimentia. Mom told her stories of her life each time I visited her in the nursing home. She told some of the same stories many times, then out of the blue she'd tell a new one.

So I just added this little story while taking a break from the decidedly uncreative chore of straightening out my perpetually messy home office. My restless creativy impulse dragged me from the closet to the keyboard.

That's my story and I'm stiking to it.