When I get those few extra minutes in between helping someone with something or another, my brain's wheels are already turning. There isn't a day that goes by without me "experimenting" on something. I might be busy taking pictures one day, and making a video with them on another. I might be working on a poem one day, or taking a moment to get some progress going on my story. There may also be a plug in there once in a while to attempt to sing a new song or playing my flute. If I can bear the sound of those well enough, I might include them in one of my videos.
Why do I do this? I'm not sure I know the reasons well enough to explain in a pure logical manner. There is an internal drive that kicks in once something pops into my head. The drive to create is insanely powerful, and adamant until I give in. Most of the time my result is not an amazing work of art that will stun the world, but it has to be done. Then and only then can I move on to the next thing.
Explaining this need is difficult to put into words, but after several minutes, I was able to come up with five explanations, even though I'm sure there are more to it than these.
- The need to learn: Part of my creative process is the alluring sense of exploration. I'm always wondering how or if something would work if I tried this or that. Sometimes, my results look almost the same; however, once in a blue moon I'll discover something new. Perhaps it's a feature that I didn't know existed before. Perhaps it's one I was familiar with, but wasn't sure how it worked, and I finally figured it out. Whatever it was, I get super excited (dare I say hyper?) when I come across something, and I can't hold it in anymore. There are times I would tell every person I came in contact with about my new discovery. The majority of them never really seemed to understand why I got so excited about it, but once in a while someone would jump in and at least pretend they were excited with me. Now that I'm not surrounded by people to get excited with, I end up sharing my new discovery with friends and family on social media or somewhere else where I'm in contact with people who are a good support to me. Seriously, learning something new excites me every time. I guess it's the child that still exists inside who has to show and tell my new discovery for the day.
- A need to express myself: It's not uncommon for a person like me to be chided for not speaking my mind. I cannot describe how painful that is to endure. The truth is I would like to tell what's on my mind, but I'm literally unable to do it. Being so exceedingly quiet and not able to be as expressive about things as my societal extroverted counterparts, it becomes necessary for me to find an outlet for my expression. There's a world inside my head that just can't be explained in spoken word (sometimes even in written) and the act of creation seems to release at least some of those things I see in the world around me. Taking pictures and video helps me share the beautiful things around me that I witness each day. Writing helps me sort out and share my feelings. Putting videos together sometimes includes animation which helps me show off some of the magical parts of my imagination.
- It's fun for me: There's nothing more fun to me than having to create something new, particularly when I come across a new discovery. Sometimes, creating something involves a lot of brain work. There's always something you have to work around or fix, and the fun in all of this is when you find a solution that makes the results better than expected. It's the joy of coming up with ideas and figuring out how to get them to work together. I suppose you could say it's like working a puzzle.
- Problem solving: Continuing with the last one: In creating something, you're always coming across questions. There may be something you're working on, and suddenly something comes up that doesn't seem to work the way you want it to. The result isn't as satisfactory as you'd like it. The process of looking for answers on how to fix that ensues. Creating isn't just throwing things out of the blue and calling it good. It takes a lot of trial and error to get things to go the way they need to. Perhaps it's me only, but I really thrive on these kinds of challenges. Yes, there are times when it takes some time to work out the problems in a creative work, but seriously when the end result turns out that much better, the joy of having accomplished such a work is entirely euphoric (without the use of substances).
- Reduction in stress and anxiety: It never really came across my mind how interconnected my creative projects and my stress were until I tried to sit down to write something, and nothing happened. I somehow knew that something wasn't right. Writing was my place to go when I needed to work something out of my system that was stressing me out, but when I was driven to the point of having concrete strength writer's block, that was a problem. Thankfully, there were other things I like to create that hadn't hit that point yet, so I turned to them. To try to keep it brief, the job I worked was extremely routine, and gave me little room to exercise my creativity. It became important for me to have things waiting for me at home to work on that would free my brain into its happy place. I credit those insignificant little projects for keeping me going for as long as I did. In general, I find that being able to create has delivered me out of some difficult struggles, particularly in situations when I was vulnerable to depression. They have helped me redirect my focus and have also given me incentive to keep trying, despite how difficult a particular situation might be. My mental and emotional health benefits greatly from this.
As for my recent creations, most of them are actually of old pictures and videos from a few years ago when I did my first Disneyland visit. I hope to keep going on the videos and pictures from my other collections also. Most of my things are not appealing to the YouTube audience, just me playing around with stuff, but once in a while, someone finds one of them interesting, and it often surprises me which ones are picked up by people. The ones of me singing are not that popular, but I still like singing, so they're going to have to suffer coming across those once in a while. I have recorded myself playing A Dream is a Wish with my flute and plan on putting that with one of my Disneyland picture collections. Not sure which yet. I tried setting it to a collection of Disneyland fireworks pictures, but it didn't seem to fit. It's a collection of photos, but I know a transition feature in my program that slightly makes it look like a fireworks show. We'll figure it out what to do with that. Here's a link to my latest. I don't like doing long movies, so I did have to cut some music out of this to fit it under 15 minutes. Some people might find that disappointing. It's the Pixar Play Parade from 2018. I also recorded it where you can see people, but I decided I kind of like that, because you can see and hear the reactions around me while we were watching.
