Sunday, April 19, 2009

Food for thought

In a column in today's New York Times, Pamela Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation shares this insight:


Real creative urges, those we are meant to express, don’t go away. If ignored, they bother us, affect our health, fester and eventually turn us into the living dead.


That's going up on my office wall as I calculate my next moves.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Mmmm. Good food for thought. I think the only consistent thing for me is the need to change ever 5-6 years. That change can happen within a job, but what I've found is that that's not often the case. Most jobs remain pretty much the same.

My first dream was to be a writer, and writing my blog scratches that itch for the most part. But I'd like to see if I could do something more.

Ink said...

Wow. That makes so much sense. And explains a lot. Thanks so much for sharing that.

Susan M said...

They claim it is possible to do creative research in academia, but I suspect that's not the case with dissertations, what with barely having enough time to figure out what things like "methodology" and "theoretical framework" even are, let alone how to use them creatively. I'll be here for awhile. Is there hope for my creative self, oh egg-headed friend?

Arbitrista said...

That's a nice insight. I know that I've had some literary impulses that have been frustrating me for years. I finally started acting on them and I feel a lot better about it, even if it's a much slower process than I'd like.

Barbara said...

There's research out there about creative types in prison--how if our creativity does not find positive outlets, well, then...

In the storytelling work I'm doing with rural towns, I am repeatedly struck by how delighted folks are to have a chance to do something creative--draw, take photos, write, make stories, collaborate on creative projects for the community. Something wonderful comes over group engaged together not on directly solving problems but on expressing their connections/feelings/opinions through art, through creative collaboration, through sharing of this part of themselves. At the end of a single workshop, people are beaming energy.