OK, well first you have to listen to me. But I promise this personal story will ultimately come back to you.

As you know from an earlier blog post, one of my goals this year was to transform a room full of stuff into a creative sanctuary. While my timeline for completion has extended (living example that goals are intended to adapt to life’s realities), I have continued the process slowly but surely. A few days ago, I unearthed a treasure trove of sketchbooks that I had kept in those years when I was transitioning from high school to college to young adulthood. 

One of the earliest of these finds was a sketchbook that I had apparently used as an essay for an art school scholarship application. The instructions are pasted into the inside page of the sketchbook and say: “Applications are to be accompanied by an essay in which the applicant addresses the following points: the applicant’s personal philosophy regarding the creative process, a characterization of the applicant’s role as an artist in relation to the history of art, and a definition of the applicant’s goals as an artist of the Twenty-First Century. The essay will be judged on its depth of treatment and workmanship.”

Wow, what a requirement! Looking back, it seems quite ludicrous to think that an 18 year old with little experience of life or the world would have developed a personal philosophy regarding the creative process. And yet here are a few excerpts of what I wrote, mixed in with some of my sketches and drawings and quotes from some famous artists and writers:

I then referenced James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, one of the few books in  high school English class that had really spoken to me:

Now I might argue with my 18-year-old self on a few of my dogmatic philosophies about the creative process that have since evolved. (Not to mention the fact that I was using “he” to refer to a generality of the artist and pretty much only quoted male artists and writers). At the same time, I am impressed by the spirited way that I responded to art and revealed my own artistic development. 

The reason I share these excerpts in a blog about creative resilience is not to relive my glory days as a young artist. I share because I believe that, on our personal journeys as creative people, we sometimes lose sight of our core beliefs about why we do what we do. With a lifetime of jobs, relationships, achievements, mistakes, joys, disappointments, gains, losses, observations, and mostly mundane moments behind us, we rarely take the time -- or the courage -- to reflect in the way that we might have when we were coming of age. There is sometimes raw and audacious truth uttered in youth.

I don’t remember if I got the scholarship or not. I didn’t end up going to art school. I studied international relations undergrad, worked in that field while doing creative things on the side, then went to film school, and went back and forth working between film and filmmaker support efforts and managing international exchange programs. To this day, I have still not “made an effort to overcome my apparent lack of direction” and have just settled into the life of being what writer and artist Emilie Wapnick describes as a "multipotentialite" (check out her TED Talk on the subject below).

Now is also the time to listen to ourselves. Whether we need to do so by looking back at our ways of thinking from many years ago or delving deep into why we desire to create right now, we need to make sure that the time we make for our creative practice includes not only time to create but also to reflect. This also requires us to temporarily mute the distractions of outside voices and our own inner critics. Just as we are more likely to hear birdsong outside our windows when the rest of our world slows down, so too can we hear our own songs from within when we allow ourselves to slow down.

This sketchbook was just the tip of the iceberg of what I found in this box on the bottom of a bookshelf. I continued sketching ideas for another decade in notebooks filled with doodles, collages, jottings, paintings, recording of dreams, and sketches. It made me thrilled both to see them again and a little sad that I had not kept up the practice. Ironically I seem to have stopped sketching just before the start of the 21st century. But I focused on what this discovery taught me. This was on the final page of the sketch essay: 

And so, now that I am an artist well into the Twenty-First Century, a new personal sketchbook has been born. For what is a sketchbook but a way to tune in to and freely express our own creative impulses? 

Now you may not have a sketchbook to look back on. Perhaps instead you kept a journal. Or took photos. Or have a drawer or a file or a box or a pile with essays or doodles or various jottings you’ve not seen in years. Whatever fossils may be unearthed from your creative past, take a look at them and see if you are able to reconnect with their essence to help reignite your creative practice today.  

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