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I pulled out a sketchbook yesterday for the first time in over two years and drew for nearly three hours. I’ve recently learned to crochet and started journaling again. Granted, I am not working this summer due to several surgeries and health issues so I’ve got extra time but its been a long time since I had the desire to be creative at all. I think this is a good sign of my mental state just balancing back out. the last year has been a hard one of depression and loneliness and ups and downs and nothing in me has wanted to do anything creative. but lately I’ve been thinking about writing lyrics/poetry again. that scares me because that has always been within the construct of my church so it’s been a learning process on how to do it again. have any of you noticed as you work through the spiritual side of things that the creative side wakes back up?
I think trying to be more creative in a new way is what has helped me take my spiritual journey.
I’m a writer by temperament, if not (yet, hopefully) by profession. Writing fiction, especially speculative fiction which is what I write, is a lesson in “what if?”. There is a reason writers of fiction tend to have wide-ranging and eclectic libraries of their own.
My writing attempts mean I have made some wonderful new friends and have opened myself to some amazing new experiences.Wade.
I have written and published one short story, and have another full length one in preparation. So yes, more creative, now I am not focusing all my energy into church stuff.
It sort of works in two ways – firstly, I have more time to put into alternative creative endeavours, but also I need a direction for my ideas and explorations. this used to go into church stuff – sermons and the like. Now I direct the same energy and creativity differently. I am happier about it too.
I just don’t know. I used to spend a lot of time drawing from elementary through college, especially at church or any mandatory “sit and listen to stuff you’ve heard a million times” events. My family went to church a lot, 3+ times a week and in college we had M-F mandatory chapel and of course SS and an AM service on Sundays. My journey out of fundamentalism has been going on for 2 1/2 years now and about a year and a half ago that I realized I had quit drawing. Its weird, I still enjoy drawing and totally get lost in the flow when doing it but the desire isn’t there anymore. It’s like I don’t NEED to draw anymore. I still have ideas and pictures floating around in my head but I’m comfortable with them staying in my head for now, I think. Sometimes I worry I’m wasting my talent, and then I wonder if that’s just the old “god gave it so you have to use it no matter what” guilt message. I did take some art classes this past spring, again enjoyed it and will do some additional classes in the fall, but I just don’t know, maybe art was a coping mechanism/escape and now that I’m mostly out of that toxic environment I don’t need it any more, which would be kind of sad. The question has been bugging me in a “I’m not upset, why am I not upset? Now I’m upset because I’m not upset” if that makes any kind of sense :-/
Yes! I agree that there is more time now without church stuff. I also have finally stopped working part-time, trying to “faith my way” through my disabilities after cancer and now I finally feel like I am coming out of the hibernation of leaving church January (2012) – so I have started quilting and collecting vintage toys. And I am starting to write on my blog again too (myhearthashands.com)- just fun stuff, not the serious stuff I started trying to write about after my first mission trip (July 2012, scheduled before I left the church). Anyway, yes, and I do my most creative stuff when listening to Bon Jovi radio on Pandora- since I couldn’t listen to anything but worship music before and then no music for a while. So, I am going back to my 80s music – haha! It is healing to be creative. Or at least to me. By the way, this is “Bobbie Ann” on FB- too cowardly to be on there under my old FB page that I also shut down after leaving the church.
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