The Creative Nuisance

I do now know why creativity works for me in quite the way it does, but the writing notion most frequently strikes me while I am in the middle of some essential task from which I cannot break away. While I did have a significant amount of deep thinking and creativity over my recent break, the fun creativity struck about the time the first annoying email crossed my screen at work. People with whom I work are generally fine, it is the people in affiliated organizations who expect their whims and wishes to take precedence who grate on my last nerve. With the first annoying email, I began to think of names I could call the person and what fun it would be to recreate her parents’ thought process in generating her name.f

But no!

I had important work to consider. Tasks to get done. Meetings to schedule. I did not have time to whip out pen and paper and start writing jokes.

So I pulled out a post-it pad and scribbled down the most memorable puns and posits regarding her parental moniker manipulation.

Soon work engulfed me and I began to make real progress for the day until my phone started chiming with emails and texts - mostly work related, but some socially connected ones immediately distracted me with thoughts about how to respond.

Some days I think I need Ritalin - and I should have not Googled the correct spelling of Ritalin as it took me to new and wondrous topics I never expected from a drug designed to help one concentrate - but then again, Google knows someone looking up Ritalin probably is having trouble concentrating.

The truth behind it, I think, is that when I am not working, my mind really can go wherever it wants and take as many tangents as it wishes. When working, though, my mind gets trapped in a little box called “work,” and seeks any window for an escape.

One reason I keep finding post-it notes with various phrases or sentence outlines originates from the creative interruption in my work cycle. Sometime it originates in taking bad notes and forgetting what they all mean.

Whatever it is, the creativity does often for me becomes a nuisance. I appreciate the creative juices when they are directed at fulfilling the demands of the job, but dread the interruptions that take me far from the workplace in my mind. Until I have a job that fully integrates my creative and productive desires, I am stuck with battling the wills of each value and occasionally catching myself boundlessly bantering with silly sentences of alliteration.