Monday Creativity

It’s Monday. It’s gray outside. I can’t decide if I should spell the word gray with the American or European spelling. I prefer the “e” due to a childhood of reading Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but the “a” reassures me that I’m not trying to be something that I’m not. I guess in this case that would be British.

I’m scanning Twitter looking for a fix. A tweet here, a tweet there. One of my favorite artists just bought a pencil case from another artist I admire. I smile because somewhere, two of my favorite artists are interacting. For some reason I think I am interacting with them. Really, I’m just stuck in the office reading tweets.

An educational website tweets a helpful link. I click on it and it takes me to a website that I bookmark. The information looks helpful but I’ll read it later. Which probably means never. Nevertheless, I’ll feel better for having bookmarked it.

I want to create something today, but I don’t know what. I’m feeling trapped inside the office. Trapped inside my creative limitations. Trapped inside my limited resources and a little bored with myself anyway. I need to do something new. Fresh. Something entirely not “me.” Is that the right approach right now? Should it be? Should my artistic quests take me further from myself or closer?

That would be an easy question if I understood who I was creatively. I’m still trying to figure that out. Part of me knows who I am. Part of me rejects it. C.S. Lewis wished he could write like Tolkien. He couldn’t. Tolkien, in turn despised allegory, which was Lewis’s most frequent literary form. There are days that I feel like Lewis. Wishing I could write like somebody else.

I’m not sure what I’m doing here except letting thoughts roll out of my brain. They’re dripping down my scalp and oozing out my ears. I feel them slide down my shoulders, bare upper arms, elbows and into my fingertips as they slip across the keyboard.

It’s Monday, and I’m feeling both creative and stuck. Stuck and creative. Creative and stuck. Stuck and creative…