laterlife – Sue's next thing

“The world is but a canvas to our imagination.” – Henry David Thoreau

This week I attended TEDX Melbourne “Limitless” which was a series of speakers “taking us to the other side of impossible”.

Lots of interesting ideas were explored and explained including new graphene supercapacitors which will be the batteries of the future; tiny, quick to charge, environmentally friendly and never need replacing; or ideas for building design on Mars; or using drones to research whales at sea. What really caught my attention were ideas around how to break down your own internal mental barriers and how humans and AI can work together on creative projects. Takeaways for me were that you are only limited by your imagination and by your willingness to say yes and try new things, but also that when things go wrong, don’t give up, but find another way, or find another idea that works better for you.

Considering this, my (very rough) plan over the coming months is to try new and different things to see how I like them and whether I think I am interested enough to learn more about them.

I commenced an online ‘an introduction to drawing’ course which takes you through a series of 36 lectures and demonstrations explaining line and shape, perspective and proportion. It gives you a number of drawing projects and guides you through how to achieve them. So far, I have watched two lectures, and realise I need to get some more materials if I want to follow this through, but I have made a start. One of the difficulties with trying multiple new things is that you need to get tools and materials, and even software and these all cost money.

One of the reasons I would like to learn a bit more about drawing is that I would also like to try using software to create digital images and animations. This feels like something I should be too old to take on, and I feel maybe a bit silly thinking that I could do something like this, an activity that seems to be the realm of the young, but what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose.

I would also like to be able to make passable drawings of animals, flowers and insects that I see around me. My other motivation for this is my novel. The main protagonist is a young girl who draws animals from the bush as a way of escaping other difficulties in her life. I would like to explore how she might feel drawing animals and also be able to use my drawings (her drawings) as an opener for each chapter.

The novel has taken a back seat for a while and I know I need to get back to some regular writing to get some momentum to keep the ideas flowing and alive. My plan is to revisit it this coming week; but I am a terrible procrastinator, especially when I am in fear of failing. Lots of fears to push through when trying these new things but telling others about it, as I am here, helps to keep me honest. I am hoping that by writing and sharing this blog, I will feel compelled to persevere and complete things that may be difficult or challenging.

I know that throughout my life I have taken the easy way through things and not pushed myself enough, probably through fear of failure or fear of what others may think of me… “who does she think she is?”. I realise now that it doesn’t matter, and if people think badly of me or that I am somehow pathetic or useless in their eyes, I don’t care. I have only one life and I am going to do what I want with it, regardless.

So, today’s self-talk is – I will write my novel, I will learn to draw, I will make mistakes, I may fail or I may succeed, either way I can live with that. The doing is what I want to focus on, rather than the outcome.

It’s funny how there are things about yourself that you come to believe are self-evident, that you have never questioned, then suddenly something changes and you realise that your thoughts and beliefs have been limiting you, eroding your potential. When we are very young, we are probably at our most creative and our most curious. Over time however, these traits are often lost or ‘beaten’ out of us. I don’t recall ever thinking that I was ‘creative’ although when I was at school, I tried lots of things, but was never one of those people who are considered the creative types. I recall doing things like screen printing and painting in art class, but never felt I was any good. The area where I felt most creative was writing, and I think that all of my life writing has been there in the background mostly, as the thing I think I can do. I have dabbled in poetry and short story writing, mostly for creative writing courses and my own amusement. When I say amusement, I really mean therapy. Writing has always been my way of trying to stay sane and making sense of how I felt and how the world works. Its my outlet. I have always found that keeping a journal or just writing about what is bothering me, helps me to get perspective. And to some extent, that is what I am doing right now.

As I have grown older, I have come to believe that everyone has creative abilities and that expressing these whether publicly or privately is positive for our mental health. I think I have also widened my definition of what I think creativity is.

The Oxford dictionary defines it as: The use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness.

So whilst, colloquially we tend to think of it in terms of the arts, creativity can be anything. The use of imagination is the key I think, and this is something we also seem to be far better at as children than adults. The main thing though is that we follow through with those imaginings and create a new thing.

For most of my adult life, I have been busy with life; relationships, work, making ends meet, children; all of these things keep you so busy in mid-life that often its hard to find time, energy or even inclination to be ‘creative’.

As an older person, I am finding that I see things differently now that I have time to look. I think again, that as children and older people we see detail in the world and gain delight from small things much more readily than we did in mid-life.

I know that I am now much more aware of things like plants, birds and insects than ever before, and suddenly find myself wanting to photograph them, and I am even thinking maybe I could draw or paint them. Clouds and the colour of the sky at dawn, the light from the setting sun on the leaves and trunks of trees, all of these things are suddenly apparent to me, where before I might have said, yeah that’s nice, now I am in awe of the beauty. I am finding that photography is giving me great pleasure, particularly because it makes me see things in ways I have not before.

I have no skill at all at drawing, but I am much more open to the idea that I could learn these things. A young man who sat near me at my old workplace had a sign on his desk, which really resonated with me. It said: Skills are built not born. All our lives we believe we can’t do things, we tell ourselves ‘I’m not good at that’, even before we have even tried. Of course, there are some skills that you can learn but will never be great at, but in most cases you can learn enough to do a creditable job of it. I doubt that if I learned to play the piano, that I could ever become a concert pianist, but I could probably learn enough to play for my family and my own pleasure.

So, now I find myself at a crossroads in my life. I have been retrenched from my corporate role of 18 years, and at the age of 62 I realise that perhaps my time in the corporate world has come to an end. I’m not too sorry about this, although I do miss the daily interactions with people that come as a matter of course in your working day in an office, and I miss the challenge of problem solving and idea generation that working life brings. But I have an opportunity to pursue a different course now. What that is remains to be seen. I am toying with starting up a small business, as well as writing a novel and improving my photography skills. I am also keen to learn to draw, at least in a basic way, so I can reproduce a likeness of something that is recognisable. There are great online courses for almost anything you could possibly want to learn these days, so learning new things is high on my agenda. As I live in country Victoria, I am also looking out for opportunities to get involved in my community.

And of course, blogging. This is a new passion for me, an outlet for my need to write and express my views on whatever is on my mind. If no one reads it, no matter, the main thing is getting the words down.