Creative outlet

I am not the world's best artist.  That is a fact.

I'm not the world's best writer.  Fact again.

Nor musician.

Nor gardener.

Nor chef.

Nor photographer

Nor woodworker.

Nor decorator / home maker.

But that doesn't mean I can't do my own version of all of the above - and more.

For the past few years, as we've been building a company or two, time has been in short supply.  Specifically time for non-business-building activities.  Every waking hour it seems is devoted to slaving away in order to provide other people with happiness / service / the things they pay us for.

It's truly a never-ending slog.

In the midst of it all, any attempt at balance has been basically non-existant.  Which is fine for a time, but not forever.

Us humans are creative beings.  We have an innate desire to make things - things of beauty or excellence, that might not have anything to do with putting food on the table or a roof over our heads.  It's why we scratched figures on cave walls.  Why archeologists find intricate gold beadwork.  Why gigantic heads watch over the horizon on Easter Island.  We simply can't help making stuff, even while our main priority is not being devoured by a sabre-tooth beast.

And yes, you can spend your days commuting and typing and working and never see the stars.  But one day the time will come when those creative urges can no longer be surpressed.

Me, well I've taken to occasionally splashing paint on a canvass.  Not enough thereof, but it's a start.  The piano is languishing in a corner, and when my arthritic fingers are not too sore it gets a quiet tinkle.  The garden...well, that's simply a work in progress, a battle to keep ahead of the morning glory vines.  We'll get there.

Yet very often I find myself daydreaming about the other creative stuff I want to do.  There are words I want to write down (whether they're ready by other people or not).  Things to make in wood, wax, metal, clay.  A sewing machine waiting for inspiration to be stitched into reality.  Cameras with shuttered lenses biding their time.  A house that needs turning into a home.  An entire world out there that I have yet to explore, document, absorb and embody.

It's hard to express how I crave that outlet at times - it's a feeling of artistic dehydration.  Days like this past weekend where I feel I may lose it if I don't get a chance to do something - anything - arty.  Yet all of that gets cancelled out by the need to make numbers that go into computers in a building called a bank - where those numbers can be given to other people to keep body and soul together or the rain off your head.  The constant chase after money - it kills that little flame.

Or not?  Because as focussed as we are on making a living, still that pilot light of a fire burns away, waiting for the day it can be released and run wild, fleshing out those daydreams and ideas and imaginings into things you can hold in your hands and see with your eyes.

The day is coming.  It has to.