Creative Practice

Do you have something in your life that you cannot do without? I have just been reading the preface to Ray Bradbury’s book “Zen in the art of writing” where he talks about how not writing every day, for him is a form of death, and how this is true for many people who have a creative practice. He likens the practice to the life blood that keeps us alive.

As an artist, my artistic practice is like that, but I am just discovering that I have another hidden practice that I have buried so deeply in my psyche that it is only just beginning to reemerge after over 50 years of being submerged beneath layers of low self esteem caused by being misunderstood.

For most of my life I have believed that I am stupid and unable to learn and even less able to write anything worthwhile. But I am beginning to remember a time when I knew that I loved to learn, that I loved to write with wit and humour, and that people enjoyed reading what I had written. This was before the education system taught me that I was stupid because I couldn’t learn the way it thought I should.

Publicly acknowledging this buried practice is an important step in the process of bringing it back to life and reintegrating it into my daily life.

If you’ve read the ‘about’ section you’ll know a little bit about the things I’m interested in and have been studying, but what it doesn’t tell you is anything about the thought processes that are going on behind the scenes. That’s what I hope to be able to share with you here on this blog.

I’m not promising to write a post every day, because in my experience that’s just setting myself up to fail. But look out for regular updates and please join in the discussion – I’d love to share thoughts with you.