Be Creative

I have a lot of creative friends. For my 20th birthday, from one such friend, I received a small block of wood, painted maroon with a pencil sketch of two barefeet viewed from behind, some bits of white screening, and a piece of masking tape that says, 'I dreamt of laughter and pounding through ponds." It's lovely and I treasure it.

I've also had to pleasure of taking classes that focus on questions like "What IS performance?" (it's everything, in case you were wondering) or force us to think about rhizomes ("underground, horizontal stem of a plant that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes") as a post-modern concept. And yet, I am not a creative person. During group projects, I'm the girl who cleans up everyone's contribution onto a neat power point and submits the Works Cited page. (APA, MLA, I do it all!)

I blame this on being surrounded by so many creative people. On of my friends just won $500 for a folk album he wrote and then analyzed in a 25-page artist statement for his Senior Honors Thesis. What. What? I have the opportunity to do a senior thesis to. On ANYTHING. Seriously. People to crazy things like write, direct, and star in a play perform on the subway or study medieval weaponry. Lots of people get involved, professors are psyched to witness young, revolutionary art and the Senior Honors Thesis showcase is the pride of my school (occuring at the same time as accepted students days). But guess what I'm doing? I'm studying AAC board construction. Basic boards made on Overboard or BoardMaker. Boooring. (To my creative friends, not me!) Personally, I think it's important research, meant to contribute to a part of speech-language pathology that helps people who really need it. Imagine if all your thoughts and feeling and knowledge could only be communicated on a device. You want it to work efficiently, right? Right. So that's why I'm doing my thesis on something, not so creative.

With the opportunity to make sculptures out of my own poo out the window, I need to look up other avenues to release the wild artist within. I'd considered painting, but the only subjects I thought of representing were the larynx or the feline cochlea. I really hope that once I have real clients someday I will able to regard speech-language pathology as what it is: a job. For now, it pervades many aspects of my life. Even my pleasure reading! I read A LOT of books written by doctors. It all started with a little flirtation with Dr. Atul Gawande in the New Yorker. Then I read his first book, then his second, then I read How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, then When the Air Hits Your Brain by Frank Vertosick, then Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, and I'm finishing Another Day in the Frontal Lobe by Katrina Firlik and about to start Vol. 1 of The Social Medicine Reader. Don't get me started on all the medblogs I read!

I guess all of this means that I have no creativity flowing through my body, except maybe for ths artistry required to change the diaper of a squirmy eight month-old while managing a temper tantrum from his two and half year-old sister. I do this every week in my other role as The Nanny!