Creativity

Today my sister came over and we tried to do some screen printing on t-shirts. She finished her screen far before I was even 2/3 of the way done with mine, so we only printed hers. As we were putting the dye down I mentioned that I have a short attention span for crafts.

"I'm surprised," she said. "You seem to really get into your projects."

"I do, for a short time," I replied. "And then I get sick of it and pick up another. I just rotate, so I get a little bit done on a lot of things but it takes forever to finish anything."

Within the past two days Mike has thought aloud a lot about what he's going to do now that he's not a part of the band. He's giving some consideration to eventually joining his friend Ashley's band, but it seems like he's giving more and more consideration to his own music, which he creates under the name DJ Dialtone. He's also starting to think about the hobbies he loves, like building electronics and messing around with clay. He's starting to focus on what creative pursuits would make him happiest, and how to follow those things.

Seeing him think about all of this makes me think about my creative pursuits too. I'm sick of making tiny amounts of progress on many things simultaneously and feeling like I'm going nowhere. Here's a list of the things I'm working on currently:

- knitting a scarf
- learning American Sign Language
- learning Spanish
- learning the process of screen printing
- learning to play the keyboard
- doodling ideas for a webcomic
- writing more, which includes this blog, my Catholic blog, and possibly a few short stories
- reading more...right now I'm in the middle of The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell and Stuart by Alexander Masters, plus I have a small pile of books Mike thinks I'd enjoy.

I'm fairly content with my progress in learning ASL and Spanish because I'm exposed to both of those languages at work. The rest of the things, though, are conquered in my spare time - that is, once you subtract time for hanging out with Mike, working, and "life chores" like cleaning, cooking, shopping and laundry. I just don't have much time, and when you divide that time among a bunch of different projects not much headway is made on anything.

One solution, of course, would be to pick one thing and just do that. I have no idea how people do that. Many of the people I know have one overriding passion, one thing that matters most to them. It can be anything from a career, music, home renovation, raising birds, visual art, whatever. I don't have any one thing that I like better than everything else, and it seems like whenever I do decide to pursue just one thing, something else comes along that captures my interest even more.

Another solution would be to just accept my scattered nature, but I can't. I can't help but feel like a flake when I have a thousand little projects going on.

Bah.

Mike still really wants me to take a class this winter. I wonder if I can take one that would help me find out what I really want to do.