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Updated end of Part A

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Kenneth John Odle 2024-07-13 18:52:29 -04:00
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@ -351,6 +351,34 @@ But it's not satisfying work. It pays the bills\footnote{Well, barely, after the
Considering that my entire job exists to help keep the drug supply safe (well, the \textit{legal} drug supply anyway) that statement may sound frightening or even disturbing. But it's not really. You want this job to be boring. When it's not boring, it's generally because something has gone wrong, and and this is one of those industries (like nuclear energy or airplane manufacturing) where you really don't want things to go wrong.
Part A, continued
The irony is that I took this job because I knew it would be boring. Mmy last job had been so nerve wracking that mentally I was just completely shot by the time I got home and creating something anything was a damn difficult thing. I figured that if I had a job that was boring where creativity was not encourage (that is we have a procedure, so just stick to the procedure) I could store my creative juices during the day the and use them during the evening to create things.
As it turns out things don't exactly work that way.
You can't store up creativity during the day and then use a great big gush of it in the evening. That's not how creativity works. What happens instead is that your creative juices just dissipate throughout the day and when your day is over you're just empty—a dried up husk that could be blown away by the lightest breeze.
Because I used to be a teacher I'm always looking for metaphors that will adequately convey the meaning or understanding of a particular situation. I guess the correct metaphor here is the standing in line and holding all your pee metaphor. This seems apt because in real life the minute you make it to a restroom you let it go all at once and you are pretty much relieved to be done with it and don't wanna go back. That bathroom hasn't been cleaned in days anyway.
Yeah that's not the model for creativity I'm looking for.
I remember the that ages ago I saw an interview you with the father of a very large family (which had grown mostly through adoption) and the reporter asked him how he divided his love amongst so many kids. His answer was brief and to the point: love is not something you divide he said, it's something you multiply.
That is the model I'm looking for when it comes to creativity. You can't save up creativity so you can use it later. Creativity is something that cannot be divided. It must be multiplied.
That leads me to this metaphor for creativity: creativity is like a river—it has to move to do anything. It can move boulders and it can sift the finest silt. It can carve a valley through a plain or it can split mountains. It can nurse the communities around it and it can serve as a way for them to get from one place to another.
Dam a river and it does not become a lake, it becomes a prisoner. It is not content with its lot. It constantly seeks to escape. And when it finds it, it will give some small warning but then it will completely and utterly destroy that dam.
And yeah that's what I've been doing with my creativity. I've been holding it in like a full bladder in a long line. I've dammed it up like a river in the desert. I get to the end of the day and look to release it but there's no point. It's gone and I'm left high and dry.
Lesson learned. You can't hold back creativity. You can't divide it up, hour by hour. You can't parse it out drop by drop.
Creativity, like love, can only be smothered or multiplied.
It's time for me to start multiplying.
\section{Tomorrow}