A Need to Create

From the time I was young there has been this innate desire to create beautiful things. While I can't necessarily say everything has certainly turned out beautiful, the process of bringing to pass something new has fulfilled a very deep part of myself. Yet this part of me is ever a sieve, consistently dripping until the need to fill it again becomes almost overwhelming.

I spent a large part of this year feeling unfulfilled. I delved into a vast and gloomy depression, one which has taken me a good many months to pull out of. A portion of the chaos left behind by this consuming ailment was a sense of emptiness. I could not create. Words would not come to my mind. The desire to begin a new project felt like a bother rather than a pleasure. I cannot begin to express the sorrow and anxiety this brought to me, someone who used to find some of my greatest pleasure in creating.

As I began to speak of this feeling to others I was given two extraordinary descriptions of what had happened to me. The first was through my special friend, Herbie, from across the big blue pond. He described me as a pen without any ink - and to be described thus was especially poignant for me as I consider myself a writer-in-training. Immediately to my mind popped the image of a pen being scratched and scratched over a blank piece of paper, pleading for something wonderful to come out of me.

The second description came through a sister in my church, Sister A___. As we talked together she paused, then said, "You're like one of the ten virgins in the New Testament. You're wonderful at sharing your oil with others, at helping them receive those things spiritual, but you're so busy sharing you keep forgetting to refill your own lamp. Your oil is getting low, spreading too thin, and you need to stop to refill."

And now here I am. I've been toying with the idea for a separate blog strictly for my creative side. Whether it's my latest afghan, scarf, short story, picture, drawing, whatever, I need an outlet for it all. I encourage ideas, critiques, comments, and if you know of something creative you'd like to share with others I'd be happy to put up links or you're welcome to share them through allowing me to post them here.

In any case, I hope you enjoy seeing a bit of my creative side.