The Closet Creative

Let’s start the New Year with something I wrote for a friend who was forgetting just how creative he is (something we all do from time to time). May it encourage you to live more creatively in this New Year…

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You know who you are.

You watch commercials not because you’re interested in the product, but in the story they’re trying to tell. Or the music. Or the set design.

You skim through the headlines of the newspaper (which you likely browse online) but then you settle down for a slow read in the culture section.

You like bright shiny objects not for their material value, but for their design.

The conversations that energize you are ones of possibility, of new ideas, of what if’s…

You follow innovators and creative types on Twitter. Your newsfeed reflects similar interests.

Beauty matters to you.

And very few people know any of this about you.

Why? Because while art and creativity, inspiration and the imagination, technology and design are all powerful interests, you — to varying degrees — deny that these are yours. They fill a large part of your soul but a small part of your identity.

You are, in short, a Closet Creative.

Why is this?

• Creativity isn’t practical. And you are a very practical person.
• Creativity doesn’t pay the bills. You’re still practical.
• Creativity is for other people. Artists and such. They don’t look like you (or so you think).
• You likely took a stab at some creative effort when you were younger. A drawing perhaps. A musical performance. Maybe a poem or a project that meant a great deal to you. And it got shot down. Wasn’t “good.” Didn’t meet others’ standards.

You learned at a young age that creativity involves risks. Ones you’re not willing to take.

So you stay in the closet.

It may be dark in there, but it’s “safe.” Certainly not as scary as creativity.

Creativity? Scary? You bet. You can’t control it. You can’t really understand it. Others certainly won’t. It makes you feel something inside that doesn’t feel normal. You don’t know what to do with any of that.

And yet…

And yet. You know who you are. You may not know why creativity matters to you, but deep down it does. Desperately.

Deep down, you want someone to give you permission to be the creative person that you sense you might be but never could be. You want the green light. The go-ahead to try something new, something different. Something…creative.

This is it. This is your permission to heed that inner longing, that yearning that you suppress and even deny but that won’t let you be.

You are creative. How do I know? Because we all are. In one way or another, we all have an innate hard wiring to make something new, find a cure, solve a problem, do something better, create something that never existed before.

Some of us just hunger to express this more than others. And far too many of us ache to create but never act on it. And then we get to the end of our lives and all we have to show for it are regrets. Let that not be you.

Be the creative person that deep down you know you are. I give you permission, but most of all, you need to give you permission. You no longer need to be a Closet Creative.

This won’t be easy, but it will be good and right and true.

We’ll be coming back to this topic much more soon, but for now say these three words to yourself enough times until you begin to believe it.

“I am creative.”

Yes you are. Welcome to the club.