I Am Not Creative.

I am not creative. I have ideas that come and go but I am too busy to ever actually fully realize them. I have the necessary tools in which to be creative and yet I don’t utilize them. I am a creative failure.

I am not creative. Through out my day I envision my ideas changing world. I wax poetic on a completely original idea that will alter the course of human history. I can taste the coming change and BEEEEEEP – oh I got a text! I’ll come back to this idea in just a second. What, crap, what was I thinking about? Crap crap crap. I am a creative failure.

I am not creative. My thought bank is full, in fact it is overflowing, and I am ready to cash in. To make sure I can, I take notes on random scraps of paper in preparation as I get my ducks in a row. When I get there, I fish out a wad of paper thoughts and I am instantly rebuked. The writing is sloppy and illegible. If I can’t read it, how can anyone else? I am a creative failure.

I am not creative. I have a creative factory that is pumping out ideas faster than Henry Ford could even dream but the factory is not my own. My assembly line, though fully functional, is contingent on my emotions which, though generally positive, are all over the place. I have no Model T. No, I have too many products and no market for any of them. Unlike IDEO, I don’t harness my creativity thus, I am a creative failure.

I am not creative. I play games, I read, I go to school and I try to challenge myself to think but it doesn’t work. Who has time for all of these things all of the time? In then end, (graduate) school wins the battle for my time and sadly, it is the villain. Instead of being challenged to think, to grow with the material and to actually create, I simply regurgitate. I repeat what I read in a massive bundle of word vomit. I paraphrase the ideas of others while not adding my own input – how could I? I am a creative failure.

I am not creative. Though I live a full life that is chock full of meaningful relationships, interesting experiences and a willingness to try new things, I do not translate it into, well, anything. Challenging yourself to really live life, to be the person in the story that is worth writing about, is difficult but it isn’t enough. The “most interesting man in the world” is interesting because his life is a creative outlet and someone else captures, err manufactures, it. Life is interesting/captivating/invigorating and so are ideas. Where are mine? I am a creative failure.

I am not creative, at least not without my creative spaces. I have very specific ideation spaces where I am prone to go into a day-dream like trances where ideas are like clouds and I am a cloud collector. I fly around collecting these floating masses with impressive ease. Here, I am creative. Here, I am more creative than anyone. Back in the real world, I am riding the T around Boston, going for a long run or taking a shower but it matters not since I am really far above, flying. Just flying. And then, unless I snap back to reality and take note of my cloud collection, it is all gone. Poof. And once again, I am a creative failure.

You are creative. You can learn from my failures. And you must. You are my hope to impact the world through creativity. You can find and embrace your creative spaces, copy them down, mull them over later and then actually use them. Use your ideas to change, or at least challenge, the status quo of the world. You can be everything I think I am when I am in “the cloud.” You are the future because you see problems as creative opportunities and, more importantly, you fix them in ways never before dreamed of. You are so beautifully creative so look in the mirror and you’ll find that you are the fairest in the land. You are a creative powerhouse.