The Dream of the Creative Life: A Short History

Sometimes I feel pretty certain that my desire to live "a creative life" was something I was born with.

I think back to even early childhood, and I didn't typically look at "adult life" in terms of having a job or profession... instead, I was fascinated by the idea of finding, making or growing something and selling/trading those things to others.

No doubt, "the entrepreneurial spirit" was there... but without really understanding it, I was far more interested in self-sufficiency than dependence on others. Of course, that might attributed to my parents' frequent absences, imprinting on me the idea that it would probably be wise to learn how to survive as an individual entity.

The earliest I remember being part of the family forest outings to pick mushrooms and berries was when I was maybe seven or eight, and even then the idea of "finding lots of mushrooms and selling them to a greengrocer or supermarket" felt far more attractive than "working," the way adults talked about it.

The same - or something very similar - held true for my stamp collection... I started collecting stamps when I was just 7 years old, and whereas I absolutely enjoyed the "hobby" part, it was not very long before I eyed the possibility of buying and selling for profit.

I say these things, while also being acutely aware of the fact that as I grew from childhood into my teens and into becoming a young adult such dreams continued to hold great appeal, while the thought of going to work at some kind of regular job held almost no appeal for me.

Of course, after I finished University reality set in and I recognized that I needed to do something for work. Although I very much enjoyed trading stuff and trying to find things to sell for a profit, it was also painfully obvious that it was not enough to sustain me. Or, at least, I had not yet found a way in which it could sustain me.

Even so, I never embarked on a so-called "career;" I pretty much limited myself to having jobs, doing everything from being a house painter to grading English papers to being a home care helper. Even when I was a technical writer in the IT industry, I was always eyeing other ways to build my life.

As I have mentioned before on these pages, the dream of being a writer was also part of my early years and even though I have consistently written since my teenage years I have never formally worked as a writer... other than as a technical writer which isn't ultimately very creative.

To that end, a great deal of the effort I put into my blog posts here on Hive are not monetarily inspired. I say that in the sense that the writing comes first, and the rewards are a distant second. Not that I am not grateful for the rewards, mind you!

But when I drill deeper into my underlying motivations, the actual appeal comes from creating something with my own hands and being rewarded for doing so.

Art represents yet another facet of the creativity gene. It represents creative expression to be sure, but it also represents being rewarded for things created by my own hand. Which gives it an intangible value that's hard to measure.

And so, I keep moving forward, even if isn't the most well-compensated path I could have chosen!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-10-18 01:22 PDT
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