On Being Creative With No Purpose

Creativity has always been the only thing I really liked about myself.  Or at least it was the fact that I never really brushed aside like everything else.  When someone says I'm pretty, I come up with a hundred reasons why that person is a dumb liar, but when I'm complimented on something that has to do with my creative brain, I actually feel comfortable thanking them. 

And yet, I grew up dancing from the age of three and piled on every single style of dance that I could take, from tap and jazz to gymnastics and pointe and eventually when I realized that I didn’t need to do it and it wasn’t going to be what I did forever, I just quit. There was a whole lot of teenage angst and awkward issues that had a lot to do with that, but I also just realized that I wasn’t going to be a dancer… so what was the point? 

While looking for colleges, I really wanted to study musical theater.  I wanted to go to Emerson. but I never thought it’d be an actual career path I would be able to go down.  Instead, I went the safe route and went to Suffolk (literally across the park from Emerson) and studied something safe and boring that I haven’t touched since.

While at Suffolk, I briefly considered switching to NYU and studying magazine writing and becoming a magazine writer but all I heard was that it was a really difficult field to break into – and it was also slowly dying at the same time.  So I decided to stay where I was and keep taking improv classes.

While improv classes worked out for me and blossomed into something much bigger, for which I'm extremely happy and grateful, there was always a part of me that felt like it wasn't real and that there was no way I could do improv comedy forever.  I mean, technically that's sort of true - at least not as a career. 

Eventually, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue comedy in a grander sense, which is funny considering I never gave any other creative career option a chance but thought, “Yeah! Comedy is going to be easy peasy!”

That being said, now that I’m in L.A., I feel myself falling back into the old mentality that I used to.  What’s the point of doing something creative AT ALL if it’s not a viable career option?  I’ve become a bit more practical since moving here and that probably has a lot to do with being smacked in the face with becoming an adult.  All of a sudden, I had to deal with my credit score and it’s ability to fuck up everything from renting an apartment to leasing a car.  Suddenly I realized that living my dream wasn’t going to help me get out of debt just yet.  

Luckily I found a place to work that allows me to be creative, but my role isn't the most creative in the world.  I’m literally left scrounging for creative outlets. I try to make people laugh at work, I write funny emails or put some personality into a presentation for work and that’s all fun and great.  

But when I go home and watch television or do yoga and think, “Ugh, what am I doing?”  Doing nothing is just as useless as doing something for “no reason.”  So, I'm going to try to write more with no intention of publishing or posting any of it (although it'd be nice if that actually happens.)  I'm going to try to take dance classes just for the hell of it.  Maybe I'll even take up painting. 

Just kidding.  I'm really bad at painting.