A few people might know that recently I’ve become fascinated with the blog from Ally Spotts and I love the passion and the energy she and her guest writers put into it. It is one of the few communities that is so positive and uplifting that I scroll through and read all the comments, because there is as much amazing content in them as there is in Ally’s main posts themselves.
So, I did what any self respecting fellow creative would do and did a self evaluation of where I am in life, and woah, it isn’t pretty when you get honest with yourself.
Let me share a quick back story of a boy who was raised in country New South Wales, near Scone in the Upper Hunter Valley. This boy was a talented sportsman, played a bit of guitar, solid with his academic ability, and mature beyond his years. He offered the best counsel to his friends that he could, and gave them advise about life, about girls, about relationships if they so asked. He barely had a computer, and preferred being outside or reading a book anyway, and would often just lie on his bed and contemplate all manner of topics, and would then write about them, and store ideas for talking to friends about at a later date.
That boy would be me, that boy went from having (what I still recall) an incredible creative thought process for organising thought processes and communicating them to people. I enjoyed speaking publicly, I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed thinking.
Fast forward not-that-many years, and I’ve been out of school and home for 5 years in a couple of weeks, and I’ve let a lot of that go in the pursuit of a career. The aspects to life that stood me in such good stead during my teenage years, I’ve abandoned during my adult existence, and I’ve lost my creative touch.
I struggle to give advise, because I haven’t been thinking about topics before they come up, my brain is full of rust.
I struggle to write any more, because I think in short bursts now thanks to the proliferation of Facebook and Twitter, encouraging us to simply think to the next status update, rather than solving life’s next problem, or pondering why something happens the way it does.
I thought it time to take a good broom to life, and give it a spring clean, especially since I’m heading off from the place I’ve been working for over 4 years (Uber Global) to work with the Department of Finance.
So. How does one rediscover a lost creative spirit that he knows is still there, but just seemingly covered over and on an extended winter hibernation?
Stay tuned for the next part in this series shortly.
Have you ever looked back and noticed you’ve lost a part of yourself in the pursuit of something, and later realised you should have stuck to your strengths?
