Creativity Reflection 4: Future Vee

We had a guest come into our creativity class to teach us about creative journaling techniques. One thing that we did was write a conversation to our future self. I wrote 10 years into the future to my 32-year-old self. It was fascinating to see how easily my future thoughts came to me when I separated myself from this different entity of me. For this week’s creative idea, I will continue my conversation with myself here:

Me: Will you stick with journalism?

Future Me: Why are you so concerned if I “stick” with it? What are you worried about?

Me: I worry that I wasted four years at the best journalism school in the nation. I worry that I should’ve switched to Strat Comm or just to Textile and Apparel Management.

Future Me: Just because your degree will be a BJ (that joke will get old soon, seriously) doesn’t mean you have to ever work at a newspaper. Your degree has taught you so much about how you work with yourself and others and how to communicate. Anyone, any company needs that.

Me: But, I have always felt like all the other journo students were so much better than me, how will I fit in?

Future Me: Typical. That’s the J-School for you. Pitting you against your friends and professors pushing you to do better through pure competition. You can’t let that destroy your positive headspace. Let it make you stronger, let it push you to do better, but you can’t let it freak you out to the point of being complacent.

Me: So, I’ll be all right?

Future Me: Yes, you will. Now, why are you trying so hard to picture your life without a husband or kids at 32?

Me: I am afraid of letting go of my independence. I know people call me VeronMom but I don’t know if I want the responsibility all the time. It seems so daunting right now.

Future Me: Understandable, but once you aren’t in such a temporary and moving state of mind, you’ll realize it might be something you actually want. But you have time.

Transformative project update: 

I have realized that I have started thinking about my haikus throughout the day. It has become a way for me to collect my thoughts and review something that happened or some of the things I felt during the day. My haikus aren’t the prettiest and sometimes are kind of like run-on sentences, but I like the rhythm they have. That kind of rhythm has the ability to mold to a bunch of different thoughts and feelings. There have been a couple times I had to catch up on some haikus if I forgot to do them and it was kind of nice to go over that day and find inspiration in it. That has taught me a lot about how creativity and inspiration can be found in even little daily moments or things throughout your day that might seen insignificant at the time.

Creativity Reading Response 4: Whole Brain Bread

When the movie Lucy came out with previews including Morgan Freeman’s ominous voice saying how human’s only use 10 percent of their brain, I distinctly remember cackling at the TV with my friends at how scientifically inaccurate that was. But, we are always the ones to discuss our left vs. right brain capacities, especially with the common trope of journalists being bad at math. Leonardo da Vinci probably wouldn’t be a fan of us restricting our abilities like that.

In Gelb’s piece How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, he emphasizes how Leonardo was a fan of the “whole-thinker” concept. People try to separate Leonardo into two people: the scientist and the artist. Doing so limits our scope on how creativity can work. Creativity isn’t limited to working a certain way with fact-based things like math and science and a different way for art-based things like writing, drawing, etc. Nature ties it all together.

Humans have been using nature to inspire and take ideas since we came into existence. We looked at birds wings and modeled airplanes off of them. We stared off the edge of a cliff and created a sublime painting from what we saw. We have used honey to concoct different medicines and remedies, and we have used the flowers that the bees pollinate to influence our poems. Leonardo warns us about not allowing this evident connection of art and science permeate in our brains, saying, “Those who become enamored of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to sea a ship without a rudder or compass” (Gelb, 166).

For someone who finds herself fighting her logic while she creates, this was an interesting read for me. My knowledge and logical/scientific way of approaching things is actually useful in creating new and plausible ideas. Sure, I can’t let those things hold back my brainstorming ability, but I feel like I have a solid base when it comes to ideation.

Creative Class Reflection 4: Metaphor Art

As a journalist and writer, metaphors are old friends of mine. I am used to explaining the difference of metaphors and similes and avoiding the cliche ones. But, in my Creativity class we were pushed into exploring the cliches and depth of metaphors with school as a factory, business and garden. It was pretty easy brainstorming with my group what works were the vehicle to connect school and the different words, but then we were prompted to put it into action. Much like an earlier class exercise, we had to create “machines” with our bodies and sounds to exemplify what these different metaphors represented. The business/school machine was hectic and anxiety-ridden. The factory/school machine was monotonous and eerily quiet. The garden/school machine was joyful and childish. All of these machines were accurate to different parts of my schooling life, though. Throughout my education I have felt nurtured, pushed to perfection or just a small cog in a bigger thing.

Creativity works in a lot of metaphors because of how intangible it can be at times. Creating human “machine” is one way to make it tangible and to show how creative thoughts can be put into action. Besides the many theatric activities we do in class to explore our creativity, we were asked last week to sit and draw our creativity/creative process. As a lover of crayons (which I pronounce crahn in my so-called “Chicago accent”), I was very excited by this opportunity. I was surprised how quickly I started drawing and how I didn’t even really think or plan it out, which is very unlike how I do anything. My creativity drawing included all my inspiration, such as magazines, my family, my logical to-do lists, music and dancing. We got to do an art gallery walk of all of our creative drawings and I was floored by how one of my classmates drew a thought map that almost exactly replicated how I visualize my creativity. I thought I would be embarrassed to have other people see my drawing, but when I set it up I didn’t feel nervous or anything. It felt very freeing to be able to let my mind wander on the paper through the waxy crayons. 

  
Metaphors don’t have to be creative crutch holding you to overused ideas. They allow you to connect yourself and your experiences to other people and things. Sometimes they can create the best masterpieces.

Creativity Reflection 1: I know it, I’m no poet

For my creativity class we had to choose something to do everyday as a transformative project over the semester. It could be something as simple as turning lights off only with your feet to give you that different perspective, or it could be pushing yourself out of your comfort zone by dancing to a full song each day. I decided to write a haiku everyday to see how that transformed my creativity and thinking.

When I was a youngster, there was a point that I aspired to be a poet and/or an author and illustrator.  I would write ridiculous fictional stories for my elementary school’s publishing center to bind up as “books.” I even wrote some poetry for the enriched writing program’s little anthology. Once I left 5th grade, I started feeling silly about writing that way. I had learned about my voice as a writer and I had started to hone that sassy, informative side (which has pushed me through writing, pitching and editing magazine content at Mizzou), but I would try to write poems or song leaders and just feel ridiculous. I feel like I have lost that wispy writing voice because of my fact-driven major. I kind of want it back .

I don’t want all of these haikus to feel like I am trying to hard or to feel like I am forcing myself to be deep. I just want to let go and allow myself to fill the syllable count for the stanzas with whatever works. Hell, it could be about pizza and I am sure one of them will be. But, the point is that I don’t want to feel bad for being silly or writing in that way. And at least the haiku form gives this planner-obsessed, Type-A gal a little bit of structure so I don’t feel like I am really drowning. I’ll keep track of them in these posts as I go on, so be on the lookout for some stanzas of something.

Creativity Reading 1: Fly Between

Nearly everyone knows the myth of Icarus. That Greek goof created some wings with wax and was warned to not fly too close to the sun. His ambition got the best of him and his high heights made his wings melt so that he fell to his death. Parents use Icarus as an idiom to warn their children of getting too ahead of themselves and Bastille even sings about it in one of his catchy pop songs.

But, people always forget one part of the mythical story. Seth Godin brings that part back into view in his book. We forget that Icarus was also warned to not fly too low so that the water doesn’t get in his wings and drags him down. This missing piece of the story many of us know well slams into our brains that we shouldn’t stand up, but we should stay down and stay safe. But safe isn’t always right. Safe can be restrictive. Safe can keep you from your true potential.

Safe also doesn’t allow for your creativity to flow. My creativity class through discussion of this text and other things has taught me (and the rest of my classmates) that you can’t keep your comfort zone so firmly in your safety zone if you want to grow. You have to allow yourself to mess up and make mistakes in order to figure out creative ideas. Monotony and compliance breed a plateau of ideas and whatever works with the systems in place. The education system has taught us to stay low to the water, almost too safe so that we drown in the the standards of right and wrong, instead of questioning and prodding for new ideas. But, breaking out of that rut is when change can happen. I am already thankful for this class being the wind in my wings that help lift me away from the fake safety of the see so I can see more than just the same reflection in the waves.