I used to be creative

I was recently on a walk in my village and walked past a new house being built on my block. There had been a recent rain and as I walked past the house I was hit with the smell of wet lumber and sawdust.

I was immediately transported back in time. I was in the fifth and sixth grade and me and my buddies would take wood scraps from houses under construction in our neighborhood in order to build our own forts and clubhouses.

I think about the very cool spaces we used to create using wood scraps! Now I sit in front of perhaps the most powerful creative tool in the history of man and I struggle to create stuff even half as cool.

We’ve all seen it before. Christmas morning and the toys are ignored; all piled in the corner while the kids play with the boxes and the wrapping paper.

Where did all that creativity and imagination go? What about all those times that sticks were guns, our swingset was an underwater fort, the ditch in the back yard was a WWII battlefield, me and my buddy playing catch in the front yard were actually playing in the World Series. Sadly, time, age, school, and even church combine to beat that creativity and imagination down and force us all to color within the lines. Well. No. More.

In 2012 I will be creative again. My brain will undergo a shift to the right side. I’ll get in touch with my inner-imaginative-creative-childlike-self. I’ll be in the sixth grade again!

Sure, the computer may be powerful but it doesn’t create all by itself. It takes the human element. I know I’ve got it in there…you do too. This is the year to let it out. What’s the opposite of “grow up?” Maybe this is the year we should all grow young.