Creativity and Shyness – Thoughts from August 19 and 31, 2024

August 19, 2024

I’ve talked with several people about my throat. I told them about the polyp on my vocal cords. The singer I talked to said she has had them on her vocal cords. She had them removed with surgery. A former nurse said trying the dietary changes made sense before going right for surgery. Telling people about it just gives me an excuse to talk about my singing and the songs I’ve created. We have a new person at work who I was telling about my throat. The conversation eventually led to my musical creations, animations, drawings, and writing. I asked him about creative pursuits of his own. He mentioned some things but admitted he spent most of his time on education and non-creative things.

My life of creating was mainly because of my parents encouraging me to follow creative pursuits. From creating candles to painting ceramics and building things out of balsa wood, my sister and I were creative machines. When I talk to other people, I realize what an encouraging environment I grew up in. Most people don’t have parents that encourage creativity. I call my parents hippies sometimes. It’s the closest to describing what my parents were like. Other people said this to me as a negative thing, but it never actually was. My creativity sustains me when I’m feeling depressed. Without it, I wouldn’t be me.

In many of the autobiographies I’ve listened to, the singers, musicians, actors, and other artists talked about having someone in their life that encouraged their creativity. All a creative person needs is at least one person who encourages them to try new things. A big part of creativity is creating crap. The more crap you create, the better you become at creating things you don’t cringe at. When I hear my early musical creations, I cringe the entire way through. I was experimenting with ideas. Some worked but most didn’t. Creativity is a skill that you must develop. Creations must grow. You must combine a single thought with other thoughts to form new and better thoughts. After all, thinking is my favorite hobby.

August 31, 2024

I feel like it’s been a while since I wrote a Thoughts paper because it has. I’ve been playing Wordscapes too much. My current position in the weekend tournament is third. I usually play it while I’m eating my nighttime lunch. When I’m in a frenzy, I play it well past lunch. This was one of those days. If I’m not number one in the tournament, I just keep playing until I am. Today, I snapped myself out of the frenzy. I have several new things to write about so the next paragraph will reflect that.

My throat is doing slightly better since I changed my diet. I still feel soreness, but it’s less often than it used to be. Unfortunately, this makes me forget I still shouldn’t sing in the car. Just a bit of singing reminds me why I shouldn’t do it. I still talk more than I should. Since I’ve broken out of my shyness bubble, I have way too much to say to way too many people. There’s hardly anyone at my work I don’t talk to regularly. I have more things to say but less ability to say them. It’s like I found the perfect hairbrush and all my hair falls out.

We have a new person at work. Actually, we have two new people, but one was new to me today. The old new person has been here about a week. He is gay. I don’t say that to say it’s the only thing worth knowing about him. He hasn’t come out as gay or talked about his boyfriend. I mention it to point out that he doesn’t hide it. There are other people at my work who I think are gay or a lesbian, but they are trying to hide it if they are. I find it refreshing to see someone not trying to hide who they are.

Back to the new new employee, he is extremely shy. I saw him from a distance when I first came in, but he had disappeared. Later, I passed him in the hallway, and he looked at the floor the whole time. It may be because I listened to a book by a young woman with autism recently, but he shows all the signs of having autism. When I saw him in a break room later, he was sitting at a table and facing a wall. I was him not that many years ago, so I walked up to him and introduced myself. He asked me some questions and told me a bit about himself. He thanked me for introducing myself. I felt good that I could get him out of his shell a little bit. It’s the thing I always appreciated when I was shy and in new situations.