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Is having a creative mind sometimes more of a blight than a blessing?
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Message
Posted
At the age of 69 I feel that my creativity i.e. Art, Patchwork & Quilting, Knitting, Crocheting should be relaxing hobbies, instead they seem to dominate my life! I don't feel a day is complete unless I have achieved something that I am satisfied with. From the moment I wake until I go to bed my mind is buzzing with ideas and I get really frustrated when they don't work out as I imagined (often the case!). I do have an enjoyable and busy life which includes grandchildren and family, a very tolerant husband, friends and activities but I sometimes feel quite resentful when they get in the way of my creativity. Am I alone in feeling like this, is creativity a blight or a blessing?
Posted
winchelsea (5/25/2015)It definitely has a psychological effect on me if I don't have any work on the go. I feel restless and edgy, but then again when I start a work, I feel restless and edgy in case it doesn't work out - can't win. I think all artists have the potential to turn into basket cases because of the amount of yourself you have to invest to produce art and that is emotionally hard.
At the age of 69 I feel that my creativity i.e. Art, Patchwork & Quilting, Knitting, Crocheting should be relaxing hobbies, instead they seem to dominate my life! I don't feel a day is complete unless I have achieved something that I am satisfied with. From the moment I wake until I go to bed my mind is buzzing with ideas and I get really frustrated when they don't work out as I imagined (often the case!). I do have an enjoyable and busy life which includes grandchildren and family, a very tolerant husband, friends and activities but I sometimes feel quite resentful when they get in the way of my creativity. Am I alone in feeling like this, is creativity a blight or a blessing?
Posted
I have to have something on the go, or at least planned, and get very cross with myself if I haven't. I don't have a partner now, and haven't had for some 15 years - in some ways, this distracted me from work and enabled me to be less fixated on it: and there was the dog; and for a long while, the rats..... I'm afraid I should regard all of these as a bit of a nuisance now, because they'd get in the way - although I did draw the dog and the rats, and painted the latter.... So we can work families and friends into the picture if we want to, metaphorically and literally.
The creative thing - hard to say whether it's a blessing or a curse, because if you've got that particular bug you've no way of knowing what it's like not to have it. Like Winchelsea, I have several ways of expressing it - there's the painting and drawing, oil, acrylic and watercolour, and there's writing: of which I do far too much on websites rather than for payment - you might as well write in the sand and watch it all get washed away. Of course it doesn't help if you have a certain magazine, whose name I couldn't possibly share, which has taken a piece and still hasn't published it - I mean: the agony of anticipation...... (Subtlety has always been my middle name.)
There's almost as much fulfillment in editing someone else's work as there is in originating your own - which I must now go and do: I have an article written by a Spanish gentleman which looks to have been put through Google translator, and really would rather he'd written it in his native tongue, because at least I could then sit down with a dictionary. I shall find this a bit of a challenge, and possibly even slightly irritating, but one does it because of the satisfaction to be derived afterwards. If you can say well, I did that, or enabled someone else to do that, it's a good feeling ..... I helped two contributors to Leisure Painter to write their articles, both of which were published: and since then, they've flown away from the nest and built on the achievement with which I helped them; I find that extremely satisfying, and it's all part of the same creative impulse. I'd rather have it, I think, than not - my idea of Hell is to be trapped in a job or career in which no creative element exists - just following the same formula day in day out, horribly predictably, until they give you a gold watch when you reach 65 and can't wait to push you out through the door.
Posted
Creativity for me, is a welcome relief after a busy working day. My work is far from boring, I wouldn't be doing it other otherwise
but it can be physically draining on times, It's nice to relax, sit at the kitchen table mug of coffee or maybe a glass of something stronger and just paint.
I don't worry if it doesn't seem to be going in the direction I want, I just carry on but with colours I wouldn't normally use and go down the experimental route.
As I have said before I lock the door and wont answer it if its knocked. My time is just that...my time.
Posted
I suppose that creativity, like most things, has its downside. However, I'm sure that the alternative is far worse. We have an older family member whose life, for me, would be a living hell. It consists of Mills & Boon novels (if that's the correct term...), daytime TV quiz shows then evening TV soaps. She is a lovely, caring, person - and clearly not unintelligent - but it seems that anything that requires exercising that intelligence has to be relegated to the dustbin. As far as I can see, the result is that every day is as near as dammit identical - presumably deliberately so - which would drive me insane in pretty short order. This is not at all an age-related phenomenon, merely a continuation of a mindset that I cannot comprehend.
So give me creativity any (and, if possible, every) day - I'll take the downsides!!
Posted
winchelsea (25/05/2015)I know that feeling all too well Winchelsea.I too have many hobbies that I cannot fit them all in. I used to teach Art/PaperCraft at my local college, although papercraft has fallen by the wayside my spinning/knitting/crocheting/needle tatting and art/gardening/decorating and grandchildren, are all battling for pole position on my free time. Pity I still have to work! But I have to have some creativity in my life at all times. (even at work I manage to make flowers/little people out of blue tack!)
At the age of 69 I feel that my creativity i.e. Art, Patchwork & Quilting, Knitting, Crocheting should be relaxing hobbies, instead they seem to dominate my life! I don't feel a day is complete unless I have achieved something that I am satisfied with. From the moment I wake until I go to bed my mind is buzzing with ideas and I get really frustrated when they don't work out as I imagined (often the case!). I do have an enjoyable and busy life which includes grandchildren and family, a very tolerant husband, friends and activities but I sometimes feel quite resentful when they get in the way of my creativity. Am I alone in feeling like this, is creativity a blight or a blessing?
Edited
by Nerys
Posted
I don't know if a creative mind is a boon or a curse as I'm not sure I've got a creative mind! Perhaps my mind is creative in that it envisages all manner of paintings for me to do, but fails to enable me to execute to the desired result. Oh well, onward and onward, as I cannot rest unless some sort of painting (or drawing) is in progress.