I started a group this week to help inspire and encourage creativity. I’m not really sure why I decided to start this group, except that things have been rough as of late. Work has been stressful, and joy in short supply. Add to that certain interpersonal issues and all around fatigue, and I have found myself spiritually and emotionally empty. So I suppose I needed something that had the potential to inspire.

I am at a crossroads in my life. I don’t know if I should keep going straight, or take another road. And even if I did take another road, where would it lead? So, in the meantime I am trying to light a fire in my heart. Something, anything that might inspire me, or at least distract me from my anxiety.

Anxiety is the worst, maybe worse than depression even. It’s like a heavy weight inside my chest, like a pressure I can’t relieve. And that pressure pushes up into my head, and all I do is think about all the things I have to do, but don’t want to and does it all really matter anyway? It’s like a balloon that is overfilled, and it just wants to pop, and you know that if it pops it will be destroyed, but all the tension would also finally be gone.

Obviously there are ways for the pressure to be released without popping the proverbial balloon. Thus Intrepid Creativity, a way to relieve some of the pressure. Or that’s the idea at least.

The truth is I love exploration. New experiences, new understand, new skills. Nothing gives me more joy than trying something new, or learning something strange about the world, or experiencing beauty and wonder, nothing else can compare. And somewhere in there is my love of creating. Because it is in the experience of making something, then standing back and going ‘I did that, and in the process I learned something about myself, however small, and I am changed because of it’. Also, there is something ineffably satisfying about creating, it nourishes the soul.