Understanding My Creative Mind
After thirty years of struggling with it
“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin
I am an extremely creative person since I can remember. My earliest memories of myself are about experimenting with anything to create something interesting. It didn’t matter what I was doing or why; all I cared about was to follow my curiosity and try new combinations of things.
Growing up as an only child, I had plenty of time alone to explore my environment. It was the perfect excuse to draw my boredness into something useful or at least beautiful (to my young inexperienced eyes).
But my way of being didn’t quite fit with what adults and school expected from me. As I grew older, I conditioned myself to be more like I should be and less like I wanted to be. I learned to please others and forgot to please me and my curiosity first. That’s how I ended up ashamed of my flaws and trying to be someone that I am not.
Although I decided to honor my creativity when I studied graphic design (after years of disappointment while trying to become an engineer), I didn’t embrace my true self until now. All that time of half-acceptance and shame grew thick and deep roots within me.
