Shouldn't You Be Creating?

If you don’t engage in any form of creative expression you have dormant parts of yourself that are in need of budding and nurturing.

The parts of our brains we use for work become like well worn grooves in a road that become deeper over time. Creative leisure gives those parts of the mind a break and an opportunity to disengage and recuperate.

Much of our greatest joy comes from progressing in a skill or building anything really. Why shouldn’t it? Unlike pleasure that evaporates the moment we experience it or just before, joy can come from creating. Your creations and performances can be returned to repeatedly to re-experience that joy.

I remember watching a documentary called “Between The Folds”. Not what you think. It was about people who were so singularly obsessed with Origami almost to the exclusion of everything else. Devotees who turn a sheet of paper into complex, ornate, mathematical art.

I remember picking up an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine from the 1940s and noticed there where all kinds of do-it-yourself ads for building machines like homebuilt helicopters and cars or learning skills like dancing and self-defense.

Creating is cathartic.

Our lives are continually intruded on with distractions, much of it is increasingly technological. Creating art offers us an opportunity to pay attention to our inner lives devoid of the pinging, beeping, buzzing and ringing that are forever impinging on our consciousness.

I suspect, although I have no empirical proof, that making art and building things lends itself to conjuring up creative solutions to problems you have at work or other areas of your life.

Like words? Perhaps writing poems, fiction, short stories or essays might be your jam. Poetry helps language evolve with creative turns of phrase and idioms. Rhyming meter shows flashy style and essays display erudition.

Art can be performative. Think dance, singing or playing an instrument.

Art can involve non-traditional mediums. Artistic cake makers come to mind.

Art is a journey in self discovery. We can try as many things as we need to before we find activities we become monomaniacal over. Some we’ll be good at, others we won’t.

Look for moments each week to add some richness to life.

Replace vapid pleasure with practicing a leisure craft and add a new dimension to your life.

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