Intro: Fostering Creativity

In our class this week, we were asked how we felt when we told ourselves "I am not creative." To be honest, I have to admit that I have never really thought that about myself. I suppose my whole childhood and upbringing, I've always been told I was creative, so it is the one thing I've grasped onto in order to give myself more confidence. I consider it one of the more positive things when it comes to my personality traits. 

The only thing I occasionally struggle with is reaching a creative block. Sometimes, I run into the issue of not being able to find inspiration for things. I've found that I need to be given a specific topic or subject matter in order to narrow down my path of where my brainstorming should go. When I am given too broad of a subject, I have a tendency to overthink and overwhelm myself with too many ideas and it's hard to find something concrete. I've even thought about using some sort of word scrambler to give me a topic so I can run with it.  

If anything, I am struggling with some self-confidence - actually as of yesterday when it came to After Effects. Everyone else in class seemed so much further along and I strongly questioned my capabilities. I am currently trying to get through this rut, practice AE this entire weekend so I can become more familiar with the program and works towards being quicker at it. I guess my biggest fear was just reinforced as an older student - not being able to absorb information as quickly, and/or recalling programs as well. Plus as a transfer student, I sometimes feel like I'm behind or not as self-taught as some of the other students were prior to college. In my defense however, I've read that After Effects is hard to learn but easy to master.  I didn't put too much effort into that program last year, which is probably the source of my grief about it. Another source of comfort was a friend I have in class who also came from CCD. She felt the exact same way, so it was nice to relate and offer support in our struggle together. 

So to reiterate, I am confident in my creativeness, I just occasionally question my capabilities when it comes to learning new things. I try to reiterate my partners advice in my head when he said, "Learning is not always supposed to be easy, sometimes it's hard, just remember that it doesn't have anything to do with your abilities".

We also were asked about how we felt when we said "I am creative". In my personal experience, I tend to get into the flow of things creatively to where I experience some sort of tunnel vision and can be productive for hours. Time seems to pass to where it becomes non-existent and next thing I know, half the day is gone or I am already in the late hours of the night. So while I admit that the process places me in a completely relaxed state, I do have to pace myself so it's not too much of a distraction in my life. I also tend to hyper focus and overanalyze details, so I try not to get in or reinforce that rut too much - I don't find that as a productive use of my time. 

Group projects I have found stimulate me, as long as people in it are present and involved (nothing worse than having a team that could care less about participating). People in my group last semester were extremely involved and it really brought out my inner creativeness in more ways than I thought possible. Bouncing ideas off as a design team, critiquing one another's work, and offering suggestions was one of the best things ever. So collaborating with other people in the field has become something that I probably always look forward to. 

As a final note, a classmate made a good point this week on the topic at hand. She mentioned how emotions drive her creativity - given todays current events, etc. While that seemed like something that should be obvious, I never have really analyzed and approached that perspective when creating. Making art has always been a recreational and calming process for me - but only when I have the time. I found it inspiring to maybe try to approach it from an emotional perspective. Next time when I am in a rut, I'll see where my creativity can go as a form of self-care.