SELF EXPRESSION AND ME...

THOUGHTS AND MUSINGS

This morning I woke up with a clear idea of what I had to get done, I knew exactly what had to be accomplished because I listed it all last night. Let's just discuss that list, shall we? I've been working through the same list since last Friday, some tasks have been completed (half-heartedly admittedly, but completed nonetheless) and some are following quite a unique migration pattern in my bullet journal that I’d rather not talk about.

During breakfast, there was, of course, a brief interaction (stand-off?) between me and the aforementioned list but it was cursory at best. You see I have no compulsion today, to do the things that must be done.

In fact, I've had the urge to go rogue with creating this week and just free myself from any poorly conceived ideas about what I should be doing and just do what I want to do instead.

So much so that at the point of writing this I have noise-canceling headphones blasting Joan Armatrading into my ears and I'm writing completely at will with my real-time self critical ass-hole of a self-doubting editing head relegated to background noise, and because of the noise-canceling situation atop my head, I can’t hear it.

I have no idea if any of what I'm writing will be useful. I just feel the need to express myself without thinking. Without holding myself to account.

I realized fairly recently that the reason I write my journal in longhand and block capitals is that it allows time for the right words and thoughts to filter down through my head and onto the page.

And yet what I want most to do is to create like a five-year-old with no other thought than reveling in the process and nothing more. Just playing with words and images for the sake of having fun with it.

We learn to quell the passion that turns the mundane into a creative till eventually, life becomes a series of chores that we can’t escape.

And so I’ve decided that the month ahead for me, is all about revisiting the creative space inside myself that has been stagnating and festering. The barrier between me and creativity is sometimes so apparent that I can feel it, like an outer wall, solid and keeping me self-contained and unable to convey what I'm thinking in any form other than silent introspection.

We are taught that self-expression while good, has to fit certain criteria and so we begin to mold our creativity to suit whatever societal or artistic parameters have already been set and that's a growth inhibitor if ever there was one.

I want to create intuitively. To make something for no other reason than to feel happy. No, happy isn't the right word it's deeper than that. Creating as a means of purging would be closer to the truth. A means to purging all those pent-up emotions, thoughts, and feelings sitting gagged and bound at the back of myself.

I find I'm at my least creative when I have to get something done, and far more creative when I just tap into how I'm feeling and how my creative mind chooses to interpret that and recreate it, but society doesn't allow or give space to people who just want to exist in their own shape or form. The mechanics of living, earning a wage to live takes precedence over everything else.

This morning the questions in my head are...

Are my confines real or imagined?

Are my limitations self-imposed?

What is it that I truly need to do to feel fulfilled?

If you've spent your life always tending to other things and the needs of others first, did anything good come from it?

And in undoing and unpicking the things that I've been taught do I have to learn to be me all over again or should I passively allow the self I've hidden for so long to just rise to the surface and be whatever she wants to be?

Oscar Wilde said that "the purpose of life is self-expression" and as I get older I really feel that. It's also a vital tool in my continuing mental health and drug dependency recovery. That hidden pathway that stems from the very core of my being to an eventual somewhere creatively.

I'm much more aware now of when I'm repressing the parts of me that need to move, explore, create, and it's a discomfort. Repressing all those vibrant aspects of one's self, the joyful, the playful, the creative, the ecstatic, the passionate, and even the wilful parts of our true selves can only be a conduit to resentment and bitterness.

I'm aware that our hesitance to express ourselves creatively was formed somewhere back in our past when a fleeting comment about the perceived value of what we were creating stuck in our minds far longer than it deserved to.

I wish I could say that I no longer care, but there's a part of everyone that seeks some sort of validation for the things that we do but learning to give a bit less of a fuck is pleasantly liberating.

I've decided to go on a journey through self-expression because I know that in giving myself space to develop my thoughts, feelings, and emotions to their fullest I will truly begin to understand myself and the world around me.