I was thinking yesterday of how annoying it has become to fall into a stereotype lately - one of those “I need to lose weight by eating better and exercising more” people. It wasn’t hard to look around me and realize how easy my life is. I have everything i need in my home, and appearances can deceive even myself, believing that I am doing great and working hard.  But nothing is that hard. 

I have found myself in the trap of looking to the comforts and conveniences I have created and achieved as the indicators of who I am and how well I am doing.  In reality they are not. 

In my present life there are struggles with my job, to do better and earn more, which means continually learning new technology and pushing myself to form better work habits to move projects along better. Its always a challenge.

My son is growing as a hockey player and I have never taken the opportunity to develop my own abilities in the game i love most.  So we try to get up together at 6am to go to a free skate once a week. Not easy in -40 weather.

These are examples of where I really find my value. I am most proud of learning a new code trick to finish a website on time, or feeling invigorated by an early morning skate. I also score myself by my failures on the treadmill or volume of Dr.Pepper in my fridge, but perhaps fairly so.

Comfort and convenience are never the measure of ourselves, they are the enemy of a better self. Ironically what we work so hard to achieve actually poisons the skill which led us there - the ability to deal with challenges, to overcome adversity, to steady the ship.

Staying uncomfortable might be the means to staying in good form.  Plenty of sport analogies here; how many athletes do we see change their game once they achieve success?   A three goal lead is the most dangerous in hockey.

Staying uncomfortable may just be the only way to get to where I want in life.

Being creative requires one particular stimulant - inspiration.  I almost prefer the term oxidant as a metaphor, with its bubbly, wild, immediately reactive behaviour.  It is what makes us creative.

I have always been creative. I was reminded of this recently as I assisted in my son’s classroom during a clay-modelling hour with an art instructor. Every other table of kids was following the instructions for this little peruvian mask, except my son’s table. Here I saw large X’s for eyes, or a cyclops, a cigar hanging out of the mouth, an alien puppy… I’m not exaggerating. That was the table I would have been sitting at.  I was often asked how I came up with such elaborate drawings, or how I came up with a song, or created such random comedy sketches.  Simple answer for me - I saw it in my mind first, and was compelled to see it come to life in front of me, to be the creator.

That’s inspiration. That’s what drives us to be creative - to find some means to get the pictures and sounds in our head out into the world.

I am of course learning the variations as I go. Perhaps I am really learning them now, as it appears a lack of inspiration is becoming common.  Anyone can be creative, without being what some label as “a creative” - as if making it a noun means its really important. Some call it “artist” - anyone can do art, but not everyone is an artist.  Talk about a blurry line though.  What makes you an artist?  Getting paid? That just helps you define a vocation when you’re applying for EI. 

I’m noticing the lack of inspiration in those around me, and in a way I am grieving it for them, while fighting for it myself.  The tip of the iceberg is the lack of creativity, although that can be disguised behind a number of excuses. The more it comes to the surface, however, the more obvious it becomes in almost every scenario - there was lack of inspiration, a death of it in some cases.

I was inspired to play music for people. I was first inspired to figure out notes, chords, melodies and sounds.  Its easy to see that inspiration become replaced by timelines and expectations, charts and tours and numbers - and money.  Lets just get paid already. I used to catch a good bit of trouble in my jobs as a graphic designer, for flipping through art magazines and “surfing” design websites on company time. I was more interested in keeping the creative fires going than pushing the bottom line. It made me a bad employee, but a good artist.

I have a lot of peers in the same place as I am. We’re getting older, we’ve got years behind us, we get tired of the game. But I do not get tired of feeling inspired. Time to get back to it.

I have always enjoyed and despised writing. For one, it makes my hand hurt; moreso since I broke my wrist snowboarding some years ago and have since discovered nerve damage, which is aggravated by the simple task of penmanship.

Still, on an emotional and intellectual level, writing has been at times the perfect drug of choice to appease my addiction of formulating ideas. (Argument being the other drug of course). Being enamoured by the power of words means that saying the right thing the right way becomes so alluring. It also becomes a burden. The faux-moral obligation of only writing a good, completed thought has robbed many inspirations, as I fail to begin for fear of not knowing the end. 

I wonder, is it still possible to capture complete and whole ideas when it is obvious they are incomplete? Or perhaps more true, that the writer is not complete in forming them?  I have a feeling there are good arguments for both sides here. 

I think it is going to be of necessity that I shun the possibilities of error and choose to write incomplete ideas. I’m old enough to have realized that most everything can change, especially an idea. And there is nothing here to be afraid of.

So… I have some ideas, and I am going to start writing them down.

I just had a phone call from a stranger. A woman clearly in her late 40’s or early 50’s. She was calling on behalf of a church whose name I already forget - Baptist, or Pentecostal maybe - and she was offering to do Bible studies in my home.  Would that be something I would be interested in? No.  “Ok, thank you.” Good bye.

Good intentions. Probably an immensely better person than i am. But dumb and misguided, thanks to a dumb and misguided agenda; a dumb and misguided interpretation.

Simply put, when will religious people with religious agendas get up to speed with culture?  Simply put, when will they smarten up? It only makes me mad because I’m really pulling for them.  I love good people and I love hope, peace, truth and understanding.

I don’t know you ma’am. I have never been to your church, so you cold-called me. We’ve never met, but you want to have a Bible study, in my home? With strangers? And that is your only question for me? You don’t want to know my name?  (Its my initials in the phone directory).  You just affirmed all of the cliches I wish weren’t true, all of the narrow-minded-but-true assumptions I’ve distanced myself from. Did you just cross my name off a list?  Are you past “E” and into the “F’s” right now?

To be clear, religious people, your phone calls, like this one, sound as follows:

Hi. My name is so and so from a church you’ve never been to or probably know about. I don’t want to know your name or anything about you. I just want to bring my pre-packaged and rehearsed religious pitch to your house in the guise of a Bible study, which would happen with complete strangers, and hope you’ll accept what we’re selling so we can better our statistics and sleep better at night. You don’t want that? Didn’t think so. Good bye.

It’s amazing we even talk to the same God.