After writing a few of these posts I've thought a bit about how people are creative in different ways. I've never really thought of myself as someone who can write much but these last few days have changed that for me. Sure I'm not writing thousands of words or big long detailed discussions on subjects but I think I'm getting my point across when I get down to it.
I think the idea I'm trying to express here is that everyone has their own way of being creative. For writing the most obvious way is usually fictional and I know some very talented people that way. The things they come up with that can so eloquently describe situations, emotions and just life in general make me in awe of their ability. I tried when I was younger and soon found difficulty with coming up with even an idea of the who, what, when, why etc to write about. Not to mention my grasp of the English language at that time was not as broad as it is now.
This kind of writing though comes much easier to me, describing myself, the things I know, the feelings I have experienced. Basically anything and everything in my life. The process of writing it down allows me to think clearly about it and try and explain the whole thing so that someone else would understand it. In doing so I understand myself better and in turn hope to become a better person.
Moving on to more of a tangent if you think about creativity in a bigger sense the vast majority of people have some form within them, you just need to find an outlet. My main method has always been in making computers do things. I first started playing around with them sometime in the late 70s early 80s when I was still a young child. It fascinated me that you could tell these things what to do and without fault they would do it. That feeling of control and seemingly limitless possibility all in this simple machine set my mind on fire. From that young age I knew what I wanted to do with my life and have pursued that right up to the present day.
How can something so supposedly rigid and formal be creative though? You don't realise it until you really have done as much as I have. Over the years I've probably written tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code, I have no way of knowing for sure. In all that time you create things, methods and algorithms to solve problems. There are those times in all that certainty of logic that you come across something that is so elegant in its design and just basic code layout that you become fascinated that something so complex can be expressed in such a simple manner. There is no way to teach or learn how to do that. There is no mathematical way to describe it (although people still try, those were probably the most dull lessons at university, trying to mathematically describe creativity), there is no predetermined logic to follow, there is just this inspired design that you could say moves you in an almost emotional way. That part of writing code can make you feel it is an art form rather than an exact science.
To sum up what I'm expressing on this post is that despite how creativity is seen normally, with artists, writers, actors etc everyone has their own way of being creative and it simply needs to be observed with the right perspective to be understood. I really believe most people have some form of it in them they just need to find it. One of life's greatest frustrations is not being able to find that thing that lets that part of you express itself.
There we go, not bad for a bit of musing during my lunch break huh? I'm a philosophical bugger sometimes, probably always have been in some ways given I'm the quiet type (you know, the type people always tell you to look out for :-) ).
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