Is boredom the key to creativity?
From Fallon Drewett, The Just Saying Project
Before we are born, does the stalk bestow the gene of creativity or not?
Is creativity something that can be taught or even mastered?
From experience and my inner belief system, creativity is a commodity that is lost and found during different moments in our life. There have been many times along my career path when creativity has gone AWOL. Creativity can be a bit of a dick. It leaves you in the lurch when you need it the most.
Creativity is one of those friends you love to hate. It is the friend that says they will meet you for a coffee, but never shows up.
Creativity plays mind games with you, giving you a false sense of security, that what you are creating is worthy and new, only to turn around and make you second-guess your plan, idea and intelligence.
It pops up out of the blue, demanding you spend all your time and energy on trying to come up with the next brilliant idea; only to be staring into space waiting for the spark to ignite.
As a creative, you sometimes believe it is your job to constantly have light bulb moments of artistic difference.
There are days when I wish creativity would pay me a visit. There are days when I want to create something; whether it is a blog, a new idea for my business or an activity for my son and I to play.
I found when you crave your creative abilities; they are on holidays nurturing wonderful ideas with another creative person in another city.
Sometimes when it comes to fueling creativity, or the lack of creative thought, it is because we are either too busy or we are forcing the process.
Maybe it is okay to be bored or even frustrated that we can’t always create when we want to.
Being bored might actually help your creative thought patterns.
When I think about it, some of my best ideas have come from doing the dishes, hanging out the washing and even running on the treadmill at the gym.
While I was hanging around the crossroads of my life waiting for a lift to a new venture, it was a session while running on a treadmill that I thought of The Just Saying Project. I was bored because, let’s face it, running has to be one of the most boring things for me to do. No offence to runners out there.
When we are bored, our mind starts to clear away a few cobwebs. Those cobwebs are the tedious and negative thoughts, the inner pressures to achieve certain things and thoughts of forcing ideas to a creative reality.
What I am saying is, it is okay to be bored every now and then. It actually makes space and time to invigorate our imagination that helps us create.
As a child, I was always saying to mum on the school holidays, “I’m bored, there is nothing to do”. My mum’s response was, “It’s okay to be bored, but why not go outside and use your imagination”.
And as we know, our mums are always right.
We are all born with the ability to create. There will be moments in our lives where our creativity will help us achieve both personal and professional goals. We will feel as if we are the masters of creativity.
Then there will be times where we feel as though we don’t have a creative limb in our body. We will think we are boring because we are not creative. And then bang, the light bulb in our minds flashes away the negative cobwebs, and we are back baby, ready to use our creative muscles again.
We are the masters of our own creativity and sometimes we just need time to regain a bit of boring perspective to find our creative soul once more.
