Wait! Are you sure? Please don’t let me out of the Bat cave!
While Taco Bell pushes the idea of thinking outside the bun…getting anywhere near its edge isn’t an easy task for many. The idea of sitting around a large wooden table catapulting ideas that may or may not stick is the very reason why Zantac and Pepto-Bismol aren’t slacking during a slow economy.
Creativity is the most overused action word on earth. He sings therefore he must be creative. She makes glass spiders, wow that’s creative! The tall stick figures stuck feet first in Georgia clay releasing lime colored leaves is very creative. Face it, all living things big, tall, phat, righteous, tiny, timid and brave are creative!
Sadly, we instantly learn as children, what “we” see as creativity…might not be for someone else. Feelings are hurt; heart strings are ripped from ceiling fans and the thought of inviting that special energy back into our chapters of a novel gone wrong sound far worse than swallowing powdered aspirin with no water to chase it down.
As creative as I enjoy being on a freshly purchased white canvas, a brilliantly blank computer page or inside the four padded walls of a radio station on-air or production studio…it’s a much different story if led down the hall to a “live” unrehearsed, unwritten and almost unprepared meeting of the minds.
If you quickly bolt when cameras or tape recorders are introduced…creative people cringe at the presence of the voice in their head, believing 99% of the time what is softly spoken comes across impy and skimpy.
Pen tightly clutched between my always chattering jaws, hair in my eyes as if to be hiding, hands draped over each other as if to impress my mother…an invisible shell makes up would could’ve been, should’ve been an opportunity to be taken serious. But like most, that single breath set free shot out like a rocket and crashed like Evil Knevil in the Snake River Canyon.
Your honor…I’m guilty of what author Andrea Kaye calls The Tizzy.
A tizzy is the fit often invisibly tossed when your ideas and energy required to bring those thoughts to life ended up on a sun dried tomato pizza totally ignored by a party craving pepperoni.
The reason why you clam up is because it’s completely natural to feel like a fool. You stop participating in the meeting allowing your eyes to dance in corners or follow birds that are mocking you outside the window.
What’s really taking place is a frittering. You’ve chosen to fritter away your creative input, that one opportunity to make a difference…you might physically be elected hall monitor for a week…but nope…tight were the lips and all that desire to be different pretty much continue to paint the tale of the quiet one always in the corner as if to be hiding. What happens next? You get angry!
There’s a reason why you don’t challenge the status quo…they see the project as being perfect yet you’ve been here before and it’ll fail freshly released from the gate. Rather than rock the boat….ohhhhh that scornful other voice calmly says, “Save your job by not participating.”
What were you really doing? Tossing away another opportunity to be recognized. Inside your office, cubical and car you rule the kingdom of greatness but put you in front of a few thinkers and doers…someone please call 911! When you don’t contribute…what happens? You get angry!!!!
Once free from the meeting it’s almost too easy to return to the comforts of your little world, to do nothing more than everything that’s expected…never allowing that itty bitty desire to try something new bravely step outside your allergy infested nose and say, “I’m going to jump!”
What are you really doing? Making yourself invisible. Nobody earns more responsibility or salary when participation sits in a cup three weeks old now collecting funky colored mold. By not allowing the nose jumper to dive outward and into its own crash…you are in essence giving yourself permission to feel empty and unchallenged. Guess what happens? You get angry!!!!
That only leads to one thing…plenty of sizzle without a full fledge BBQ in motion. MMMM baby, what’s cooking? Your brain on stomach acid. Your nightmares connected to fears of losing your job. Your dirty socks begging not to be worn a fifth day. They're still white! In some areas...
What are you really doing? You’ve shut down the observation tower allowing frustration to attack your alien ship like Kudzu. No matter how many times you yank that stuff from the four hundred pounds of dirt you’ve buried yourself in…ten days deep into the calendar and it’s now covering your dog, fish named Kevin and the television remote control.
Guess what happens next?
You steal my art…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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