Creativity is something of a religion to me, perhaps because my life and my work has depended on it. There are many different definitions of creativity. To me, creativity is the ability to create and change, to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, and to create meaningful – to me and others – new ideas, forms, techniques, methods for work and life. Creativity involves being original, being progressive, living in one’s imagination.

There is some courage involved – putting your ideas and work out into the world, seeing some of them live, some of them die. For me, creativity is a willingness to think originally. As Beavis & Butthead used to say, because they didn’t know what they were supposed to think, they were free to think. We live in a world full of orthodoxies – politics, religion, health care, corporatism. Hell was invited by religions seeking to terrify people into submission, rather than approach God originally.  In politics, one would think different ideas would be celebrated, but they are not. There is rarely an exchange of ideas, mostly a declaration of dogma, usually “left” or “right.” Steve Jobs was creative because he defied the corporate culture, but most of his colleagues struggle with it and are subsumed by it. As corporations have taken over movies, publishing and media, those institutions have generally become less creative and less original.

Creative people evolve and find new forms of creation – this blog, other blogs. I find my creativity is centered on change and openness – embracing blogs, then photography and videos, soon e-books.  In our time, the Internet seems to spawn the most creativity and originality, because individual expression is not only tolerated, but celebrated. Even here, disagreement and individuality is considered sacrilege when it is, to me, sacred. I believe we all possess the creative spark, and I am grateful to have the tools and be part of a community that makes it possible.

Creativity is precious. It feeds on encouragement. Many of us are taught that are stories are not important or valuable. That is not so.