Too Long

So i've been in insurance education for too long. The most creative thing i do in a day is choose which color highlighter to use on my Notebook Due Date page. Today is blue. Actually, this whole month has been blue. I need to break free from the monotony of it all.

I need a creative outlet. I need to write again. I need to paint again. Maybe this will hold me accountable...and maybe i will overcome my fear of sharing with other people this way. My writing and art has always been very personal. I don't even always understand what comes out of me but i do know that i need to let it out, or my creativity will dry up. I worry that might have already happened, but why not push myself again?

Yesterday, I told my friends about the english teacher i had in high school that gave us one day a week to write in a notebook that she never read. She gave us topics to write on, but made it clear that she would never see it, so it didn't really matter if we stayed on topic. She just told us to keep writing--don't pick up our heads--don't pick up our pens--keep writing.

I was a person who tended to worry so much about doing the wrong thing, that many times, I would do nothing. She wouldn't allow me to claim writer's block and to stare at a blank page. She taught me to push through the fear.

My freshman year in college, I had a similar experience in a beginning painting class. I would stare at my blank canvas for an hour or longer. I'll never forget what my teacher told me one day. "Make a mark and react to it." I thought that i had to know what the finished product would look like before i did anything. But that's not how life works. You can't know the end from the beginning, so all you have is what you do in this moment. Make a mark and react to it. I did...and how I paint today looks nothing like how i used to paint. And how i live today hardly resembles the way i used to live.

I had to force myself to do something drastic. I had to stop living so "safely." I had to make myself do something big and scary--having no idea how it would turn out. So after living my first 26 years in Austin, Texas, I moved to Denver.

I'm back in Austin now. Happily married, less happily employed. It works for now, though. It works for now because one day I will do what I love to do. One day very soon. And in the meantime, I will write and paint and live like I don't know the outcome.

And maybe tomorrow i will use the pink highlighter.