Creativity

It's been a very rough time lately as can be seen from my last few posts. I'm realizing just how fragile my life is and how little it takes to overwhelm it. Actually, that's not entirely true. I'm easily overwhelmed not because I'm fragile but because I've simply been hit - repeatedly and without pause - with one high-stress crisis after the other. There's always something coming up that I have to deal with. We're not talking about run-of-the-mill stressors here, which I can typically handle. Not anymore though.

It's been a particularly bad week in that I've never reached this level of stress in my life before, which for me is saying something. I'm not eating all that well nor getting enough sleep nor getting any time in for ballet. There is one small spark in my life though. I found out the other day that there's a bagpiper at work who's moving into the building next to mine. We'd talked once before and he agreed to give me some pointers on how to learn to play the bagpipes. So, on his suggestion, I headed off to the local Scottish store and got myself a practice chanter and the Green Book.

When I got home, I tried the chanter out but all I could do was a decent imitation of a duck being strangled. It's a pretty big chanter and I'm having difficulty as my fingers are short and small. Still, I persisted and now I'm able to play the scales. The next day, I went to work and got hit with several stressful situations. When it finally came time for lunch, I got into my car and very odd thought popped into my head: wouldn't it be great if I could practice the chanter right now?

You have to understand, this isn't the same kind of short-term obsession I get from say, playing a computer game and wanting to get back to it. No, this is far deeper than that and it confused the heck out of me. The feeling passed rather quickly and the rest of my day was depressingly normal with a series of meetings that went nowhere. As I got into my car to drive home, that urge came back: wouldn't it be great if I could practice the chanter right now?

Now I'm getting worried. I knew this wasn't a short-term fixation so what on earth was it? I really dislike cases where my thoughts go somewhere unexpected; it's bad enough that the chaos inherent with the mere act of living can't be constrained into something tidier but I'll be darned if I couldn't control my thoughts. Later that night, I mentioned it to my dear sister who nodded sagely and remarked that that's common for creative people, where thoughts like that aren't really thoughts at all but an imperative to be creative.

You know, she's right. Looking back, there's only been three others cases where it's happened: when I'm a part of a choir, when I'm keeping a regular journal and when I'm dancing ballet. In all these cases, the need to practice singing or to make a journal entry or to practice ballet is unbelievably strong.

Wow, I'm apparently creative now. A few years back, I'd have seen it as an insult. These days...I don't know. Singing makes me sad because I don't fit in a choir anymore. I still journal every now and then but my priorities are different. Ballet is my touchstone. The world seems a little more bearable when I can dance. Now, I've got something else to enrich my life.

All isn't bad, I guess. It's a very dark time but I'm also growing. Time will tell, I guess.