Being Creative

I’m listening to a book by Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic. In it she talks about the magic behind being a creative, specifically a writer since she herself is a writer. This book has resonated with me in a way I can not describe. It’s inspired more short snippets of writing in my notes than any other book I’ve listened to through Audible. I thoroughly have been enjoying it, and lead me to a confession…

I am a writer.

I come from a family of practical people who lost their drive for being a creative maybe a few generations ago. Being an artist of any kind doesn’t pay the bills. It’s not practical, and thus my family line did away with the idea. I’ve also watched these same people mainly my mother and father, simply exist in this life. They live a life without much true joy, mainly because it’s not productive. Getting together with friends and have a good spicy margarita seemed like a waste of a perfectly good Saturday that could’ve been spent keeping the lawn tidy. In their defense, we did have a pretty big lawn.

Regardless, they bought the lie. They bought the lie society feeds us all in order to keep us being productive, but not necessarily happy. Make a living before living.

They did everything they were supposed to do. They were married with kids with 4 degrees between the two of them in nice house out in the country before the age of 40. They lived out their 40’s watching their kids grow, going on the typical week long vacation every year, and slowly but surely working their way up the ladder at their respective places of work. They were an active part in their church community, leaders of PTA projects, and fully and completely lost whatever dreams they had to the societal existence of “good enough.”

From my perspective, this occurred as they slowly and surely lost themselves to life expectations. My father always wanted to take a long family vacation in an RV out west, my mom could never get that time off work. A few of my mother’s paintings hang throughout our house, I’ve never seen my mother paint a day in my 33 years of life. My father had a passion for raising horses, the barn on my mother’s property has been empty for close to a decade. My mother desperately desires connection and friendship, while raising us her and dad became best friends. Their divorce was finalized in 2018, after 38 years of friendship they disguised as a marriage.

My parents taught me a lot about sacrifice. They taught me how to be productive. They taught me how to make a life but not exactly live one. They did exactly what they were supposed to do, and they set me up to be successful in life.

I just didn’t follow suit. I did for 29 years. I was right on path. I had picked a profession, and I was working to being successful in it. I was on a great timeline until I realized I was following right in my parents’ footsteps. I was working really hard at making a livelihood, but not exactly living my life. Not enjoying my life day in and days out. In fact, I was pretty fucking miserable at the daily ins and outs of my life while I was chasing my career in Marine Biology. Sure, the attention and the merit I grew in the field were really boosting my ego, but my ego wasn’t making me happy at night. My ego wasn’t allowing me to live the life I had imagined as a child.

I stopped living that life, and I went looking for a life I’d love to live. While the life I love involves a lot of unknowns, I literally laugh these days when people talk to me about a 10-year plan. My response typically is, “I had one of those once, it didn’t turn out too well. I don’t plan too much these days.”

Don’t get me wrong I have goals. Accomplishments I want to have and possessions I want to have obtained in the next 10 years, but I don’t plan. I’m not a planner. Planning gives me anxiety. I’m an all or nothing type person, and if I make a plan, I obsess over the details. I’m very calculated. I’m very precise and when life doesn’t turn out the way I have planned, I worry I’m fucking the whole thing called life up. I get so booged down with not doing enough or not doing in right, I lose sight of the things I am getting right. I stop focusing on just being happy, thus leading to me being unhappy.

I no longer let life flow. I attempt to control life instead. Over the past 3 years, as I’ve been working on letting life just flow. Creating vague goals in life and general ideas, but seeing how life pieces them together for me instead of me putting the pieces together myself. I’ve learned…I like this way of living much better. I’m slowly but surely creating a life I love.

In this life I love, I’m a writer.

Some of you may be thinking…. “Duh Laura! You have a blog for goodness sakes! Who hardly anyone reads, and yet you keep posting. You obviously love it.”

I do love it. I love writing. I would write even if no one was reading. Even if I had no intention of ever posting or publishing any of my thoughts, ideas, and feelings out into the public. However, currently I am writing with the intention to publish my work. That’s right! I’m pseudo crazy enough to think this little dyslexic marine scientist turned yachtie has any right to publish a book. I don’t necessary think I have a right to, but I want to anyways.

AND I DO WHAT I WANT!

So here is my big scary confession that maybe 10 people will read, but it’s a leap into the unknown…into the impractical life I’m bound to live…

I am a writer!

I am an author!

Maybe soon I’ll tell you what my book will be about, because telling people that scares me too! And I like doing things that scare me!