Embrace Your Weird
Page 4
I’m almost embarrassed to admit I collected teapots when I was young.
How that reflects my past inner life, I don’t know. Maybe I forgot for a reason. But thinking about that embarrassing teapot collection could inspire me to write a Victorian crime novel one day. Or just to drink more tea. Noticing what we paid attention to in the past helps reveal clues about who we are today. We don’t need to commit to refreshing long-lost interests, but if something was important to us in the past, it needs to be acknowledged as part of who we are as creators. Yes, deep down I have a teapot fetish, and I’ll never be able to shake it, AUGH!
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Google pictures of toys you loved as a child. How does seeing them make you feel? Write about how one of them particularly affected you in the past. Print out a picture and paste it in here. If you can actually get your hands on one, all the better!
The more items from our past we can experience with ALL our senses, the better we can feel like a whole creator, in touch with all parts of ourselves.
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What did you collect as a child? Why?
Name some aspects of this collection that resonate with you now.
What creative roads could be opened to you by revisiting this old passion?
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As we peruse memories of our past lives (as younger selves, not as fighters in a Genghis Khan army or something), things may surprise us in a “Cool!” kind of way. And some, like my bizarre childhood teapot obsession, will surprise us in an “Ugh” kind. Both are useful! It’s just as valuable to uncover something we hated as something we loved! OR something we loved but abandoned because we weren’t “good at it.” That is actually the MOST valuable kind.
We often abandon activities because we’re afraid to be bad at them. We’re trained as kids to be graded when we learn, so we don’t retain the concept of learning for OURSELVES. Instead we carry a fear of being “bad” and judged for it. This promotes risk aversion, which is a huge enemy of creativity. We have to LEARN to be scared of doing something creative. That’s messed up! Who knows what we might have stuck with had we just been supported more in our pasts?
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List a subject you hated as a child. Why did you hate it so much? Were you discouraged by peer pressure? Bad teachers? Or was it simply because you weren’t “good” at it?
Now that you are an adult, try something you “hated” before. Can you find a new freedom in reapproaching it now that you aren’t being judged by others? Or by yourself?
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As you paint a fresh picture of yourself as a child, do you see your past in a different light? What about young-you surprises you? Excites you?
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That feeling we had when we created as kids with no goal in mind? No pressure? THAT is the feeling we want to capture NOW in our lives as we begin to MAKE things again! Children shouldn’t have a monopoly on unconscious joy. We want some too! If we can harness a sliver of that feeling as adults, we will be on the path toward a more creatively fulfilling life.
Always keep in mind: It is not our fault we stopped creating. Our inner child wants us to. Desperately! And reacquainting ourselves with our past is a fantastic first step toward doing just that.
The “Now” You
If you were selling yourself on Craigslist, how would you describe yourself? I mean, in the used furniture section, not one of the… creepy ones. So think of yourself as a slightly dirty couch and… HOLD ON!
Let me start over. Please?
We’ve done a semi-thorough job perusing our lives from zero until yesterday-ish. If we’ve dredged up a few memories we can blackmail our relatives with so they’ll drive us to the airport without complaint too, bonus!
Now it’s time to give ourselves a present with the present! This section focuses on the importance of exploring who we are NOW. What we love. How we see ourselves. How OTHERS see us. We need all these info-bits to build a new Hero-Self who is bursting with creativity, like that weird candy I hated as a kid that gushed when you bit into it. What was it called? Gushers? Nah, that’s too on the nose. I’m too lazy to look it up.
Before we dive in, though, let’s take a moment to appreciate that we already have everything we need within us to start creating! Isn’t that nice? No matter what, we’re going to ace this test! We own all the tools we need to get us where we want to go. We just have to build up the confidence to access them. And that confidence will come as we figure out who we are NOW, inside and out.
We’re basically at that scene in a cop show where the team summarizes what they know about the crime, so the broody star can go, “Aha!” in order for them to go investigate a possible lead. But it’s actually a false lead and they end up going to the wrong place or accusing the wrong person, who ends up dead because, uh… that’s about all I can remember from half-watching CSI in the past. At any rate, we’re ready to gather evidence about who we are now so we can forge confidently into a more creative future. (This metaphor works, I think!)
Here’s a TLDR for the entire section:
Think about an average day. We wake up. Go to work. Come home. Consume stuff and/or pursue hobbies. Go to bed. Fit in a bit of eating and socializing between all other required responsibilities, like making sure our dogs or children get fed as the law requires, rinse, repeat.
But how often do we reflect on HOW we do any of those things? Or WHY?
Most of the time, we take ourselves for granted. We simply… exist. Like we ignore the clutter of items in the bottoms of our purses and under our car seats, we rarely examine or question what’s going on underneath it all. “How long has that half-eaten muffin been under there? Get me a hazmat suit!”
The good news is that treating ourselves like a research project is one of the greatest joys in life, because truly we are all SO INTERESTING! I mean, if we tried taking ourselves on a date to “get to know” ourselves better, we’d be floored at how many new things we’d discover. (I’m sure we’d hit it off so well, we’d end up attracted to ourselves too. And who knows what that could lead to, wink wink.)
Every time we can identify more about what we ARE or ARE NOT, we come one step closer to harnessing our ability to create. If we don’t know what we have in our paint boxes, how can we know all the possible things we could paint? Yes, I am sure a few people just thought in a panic, “What if there’s no paint in my paint box, Felicia?” I hear you: I’m one of those people too. Catastrophic thinking is my SPECIALTY! It’s never a headache, it’s meningitis. It’s not a firecracker booming outside, it’s a nuclear bomb. Rest assured, there’s paint. A glorious rainbow of colors totally unique to who each of us are. We just may need a bit more water than others to loosen the crusty bits… ugh. Crusty is a terrible word. That morphed from inspirational to gross verrrrry fast.
Self-awareness is a muscle, and in order to start creating, we must start flexing it. Because the more aware we are of ourselves, the more comfortable we’ll be in expressing our points of view. What we like and don’t like. What we want to embrace. What we want to shred to pieces with our vengeance!! (Oops.) We need to know and embrace who we are if we want to overcome resistance, criticism, and all the other hurdles that will pop up as we incorporate more creativity into our lives.
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SENSES
What are your favorite…?
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Look at the list of virtues and vices below and write next to each how they apply to you. Circle the ones that MOST apply to you.
VIRTUES
VICES
Faith
Pride
Hope
Greed
Charity
Lust
Fortitude
Envy
Justice
Gluttony
Temperance
Wrath
Prudence
Sloth
(Any Prudences in the house? Holla!)
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Write five songs below that are the soundtra
ck to your life. Play them while you doodle. What does the music bring out of you?
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Finish the statements below with as many answers as you can think of:
The world needs more:
The world doesn’t understand:
If you have a great need to make people understand something, or a deep feeling you want to communicate, that is where you will find the seeds of your most rewarding creativity!
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A fun way we can get out of our own skulls and see ourselves fresh is by treating ourselves as objectively as possible. So get ready to objectify the heck out of yourselves! (In a respectful way, of course.)
There is an allegory referred to as Plato’s Cave. It comes from the selfsame ancient Greek philosopher’s work, Republic, from, oh, nearly 2,500 years ago. If you aren’t already familiar with it, I’m excited to drop a maybe-accurate summary of this super-fresh tale into your eyeholes!
Basically Plato (writing AS IF he were Socrates, because ancient Greek philosophy wasn’t confusing enough) describes a scenario where a group of people are chained together from birth. Their heads are facing straight forward, they can’t move, and they’re only allowed to see their shadows against a cave wall their whole life. (These are theoretical people, so don’t call the cops yet.) Anyway, the shadows would be the only reality these people know, right? They would, therefore think LIFE is only shadows.
If you were to, say, let one of the women up to walk around outside for a bit, she would be confused and blinded by the outside sun and definitely say, “WTF why was I chained to that bench all my life?” But ultimately she’d understand that her previous reality was only a small ASPECT of reality. And if she returned to where she sat (probably kicking and screaming), she’d be able to see her old reality in a completely different way. (Now that I think about it, this is the basic plot of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, right? I love that show!)
There are a lot of layers to this allegory that don’t really tie in to the point I’m trying to make here because I’m not a philosophy major and this isn’t a thesis paper, but what especially resonates with me is the idea of people stepping outside their own reality and seeing themselves with new eyes. Just think about how much we could learn about ourselves from two steps away!
Felicia was a shortish redhead and had a profile that she imagined looked a little bit like a Gelfling. Her face was kind but nervous, like a secretary who had a terrible boss who buried her in work. She was wearing mismatched novelty socks, one with penguins on them and the other with Sushi Cats, which broadcast to the world that A) she didn’t particularly think growing up was relevant to her interests, and B) she REALLY liked novelty socks. She tended to cover her mouth when she smiled, a habit formed before she had her crooked front teeth fixed, and within the timespan of an hour, she checked her phone twenty-two times…
You get the idea. (Wow, do I really check my phone that often? Terrible. Work on yourself, Day.)
When writers or actors need to create a character, they build a fictional person bit by bit. “Uptight. Neurotic. Needy. She wants a boyfriend but needs to love herself. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t like to connect with strangers. Who hates when picture frames are crooked. Who volunteers at the local cat shelter. She probably washes her hands too often and says ‘My word!’ when things are surprising.” (I think I just described my spinster older self, yikes!) Bit by bit they build a fake person until there are enough details that at least on the surface, the character strikes them as believable. One day I was working like this on a character for a TV show, and it occurred to me, Um, do I know more about this person than I do myself?
When I analyzed my own real-life character with the same tools I used to build fictional ones, I found some… okay, I admit I found some things I didn’t appreciate, like “Never replaces the empty toilet paper roll,” “Wants external praise a bit too much to be healthy,” and “Doesn’t bother calling friends to say ‘Happy Birthday’ if she already gave you a thumbs-up on Facebook.” But I also found some things that made me like myself more. “Thinks ideal gift is giving someone else the perfect gift.” “Believes in the concept of ‘magic’ more than a rational person should.” “Bit of a glutton. Will drive forty miles for a good macaron.” Together, the realizations, even the jokey ones, expanded my sense of self and, in my mind, helped solidify who I am as an artist. With this kind of work, we can all get to know ourselves more objectively. Literally.
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Film yourself for five minutes. Put the phone somewhere you will (maybe) forget about it. Now watch the video and try to see yourself with objective eyes.
Describe the person you see as you would describe a character in a book.
What surprises you about this person?
What does this person’s fashion say to others?
What is something you see that you love about this person?
What is something about this person you’d like to change?
If there IS something you want to change, make sure to take the shame out of it. Get excited about making the change. Write down some ways you could do it and give yourself an actionable first step!
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Ask five friends or relatives to give you one sentence that they think describes you as a person. Do their answers surprise you? Please you? (Make you reconsider your relationships?)
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You are the basis for the starring character of a big summer popcorn movie. Yes, YOU! List five attributes of your hero below, such as “Likes to spend too long in an overly hot shower.”
What does the hero WANT?
What does the hero NEED?
What are the hero’s FLAWS?
What skills does the hero have that help save the day?
What actor plays YOU?
What does the hero LEARN in the end?
Now name your movie and take a stab at designing the poster on a separate piece of paper. Use crayons. Stickers. Do it in Photoshop. Have as much fun as you can making yourself the star of your own epic movie!
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We can never really know from the outside what’s going on inside another person. In some ways that’s good, otherwise we’d all be too scared to drive because everyone’s faces on the freeway would be twisted in rage like super-scary gargoyles. But we need to be aware of OUR OWN FEELINGS because they’re directly tied to how and what we’re able to create.
If we feel neutral about our nightmare experiences traveling to Poland with a fourteen-month-old who was teething, why would we care about sharing that experience in a sentence here, like I’m doing now? (It was so traumatic. We had to share a seat. For SEVENTEEN HOURS.) I certainly wouldn’t have struggled for so many years making internet videos about tabletop games if I didn’t love them so much myself and need to CONVEY that love to other people. “You must love this as much as I do because it’s amazing. Let me show you why, I will not stop making these until you AGREE WITH ME!!!” See all those exclamation marks? They don’t represent apathy, my friend!
The impulse to express ourselves is seated in our emotions. So the freer we are to express them, the more we’ll be able to create.
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FEELINGS
On a basic level, what makes you:
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Finish the following sentences:
When I’m happy I __________________.
When I’m sad I __________________.
When I’m angry I __________________.
When I’m afraid I __________________.
When I’m hopeful I __________________.
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In the bookshelf, list your favorite books, games, TV shows, movies, and anything else you LOVE that someone else has created.
Survey the collection of your interests. Do you notice any overarching themes you might be drawn to? Feelings?
Are these the same emotions you’d ideally convey with your OWN creative work?
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Why did you keep this photo? How is this the best representation of you as a creator? What emotion does it convey that is unique to YOU?
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Even though they’re crucial to our creativity, a lot of us fall into patterns of DENYING our emotions. That’s because expressing them honestly is discouraged. “Don’t cry!” “It’s nothing to get angry about.” “You’re acting really emotional.” (“SHUT UP I’M NOT!”) When are we actually encouraged to express our feelings outside of therapy or watching tear-jerky horse commercials during the Super Bowl? Not often. In fact, our whole lives we’re taught to stifle our emotions for the sake of propriety or others’ feelings. This makes me sad, because it’s certainly not the state we’re born into. (Most of us are brought into the world screaming in rage, but let’s not work on rechanneling that right now.)