How am I creative?

How are you creative?

I really like WordPress’ prompts for the last few weeks and have been meaning to answer a few. Why not kick off the blog year with a post on creativity and I.

How am I creative?

That’s a good question.

To start off I’d like to say that I haven’t felt as creative in the last few months as I usually feel. Not that I think it’s coming from any source of hobby or art burn out. Rather, I think it’s coming from normal blockages such as work.

I recently opened up an anonymous hobby confession form and I got a good response yesterday.

This is something that I relate to as someone who worked a retail holiday season. I’m tired after work and my brain doesn’t want to focus on anything too strenuous at the time like work in progresses. Too much for my noggin to want to deal with. So I’ve been organizing cards as it relaxes me and allows me to decompress from my day.

There are moments where I wish I was more creative than I am now but then my noggin realizes that we’re plenty creative already. I mean, look at some of the haros that have come out in the last few years. They’re plenty creative.

Hopefully with a change in jobs and environments will allow me to venture back into those projects as I have a list of things to finish. We’re on Nightingale number three and we’re not going to stop there! Gonna stack Nightingales like Haros.

But to circle back to the main question, I spend a lot of time doing creative things. A few of my passions in life include art, scale models, and worldbuilding. All of which I try to combine in one way or another.

I like my models to tell a story or carry a theme. Some of those themes might be private and only I know or they may be intimate. The Cerulean project is a lovely way to be creative while expressing intimate thoughts or emotions that I deal with.

My first Cerulean project, for example, was a commentary on my various grief cycles that I’ve dealt with in my life in regards to my brothers passing.

My second entry to the Cerulean project was more of a positive emotional piece. I often struggle with allowing myself to be happy and content and that was a large portion of emotional growth for me. I’ve had some really great things happen in 2023.

As for my worldbuilding as much as I mention it on my blog it’s been a very private creative outlet for me. It’s not something that I’ve discussed often until more recently when I’ve been doing my prism builds and my ocean themed nightingale.

I’ve spent close to eight years working on the concepts of that world. From critters to plant life all hastily doodled down or typed up. That aids in helping me work on projects if I’m in a slump. A warm up exercise if you’d call it that.

One thing I’m excited for is to try and create a colang this year for one of my worldbuilding projects. What’s a colang? It’s a constructed language for a fictional setting. I picture mine being written more than verbalized by the inhabitants so I’m excited to see how it goes.

A colang that I’ve really been enjoying lately is Phyrexian from Magic the Gathering. Here’s a nifty video to watch if interested (click here). The lore for the Phyrexians is fascinating as well if that’s your cup of tea.

Another outlet for my creativity has been Dungeons and Dragons. I play as Dave, a seven foot tall, 350lbs, brick wall of an eldritch necromantic myconid cleric. He doesn’t speak besides for project vibes into people. That’s been a very fun way to build a character through backstory and in-game acting. Printing and painting his mini was a blast to do.