Create

Word of the Week 4/52

Create: verb (used with object) cre·at·ed, cre·at·ing. 

to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes. to evolve from one's own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention.

Dictionary.com

No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical to too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

Julia Cameron

Creative living doesn’t mean we have to make a career out of it or follow a particular vocation. Creative living means that you are compelled to create. No matter what people think of you. No matter whether you’re paid or not. No matter what you’ve been told in the past. Creative living means choosing to work on our creativity and let it take us to new places in our souls.

I didn’t begin an intentional creative living journey until I was almost forty. My children were teenagers and I taught high school. At times, it felt selfish to carve out time to write, but it kept my thinking fresh and helped me to process all sorts of things at that time of my life.

 I’m still exploring new avenues, still learning, and still creating. I’m hopeful that I can continue into old age.

I’ve had children as young as eight, teenagers, young adults, and adults up to their seventies come to me for coaching. One person has two novel manuscripts at age thirteen.

Recently, I met a woman who published her first novel at ninety-two and her second at ninety-three.

It’s never too early or too late to begin something new. It’s never too early or too late to create.

A Short Story Just for You

The Day Her Life Began (Again)

by Elaine Fraser

The day Lana’s life began again was just like any other. She got up, ate breakfast, showered, dressed, packed school lunches, put on a load of washing, ironed a shirt, and wondered for the millionth time, how she kept the pieces of her family’s life together.

‘Time to go.’ She kept her tone light but her car keys jingled in her hand.

‘Get in the car now.’ Her voice deepened with the emphasis on ‘now’.

‘We’re going to be late.’ She ground her teeth. Her dentist’s warning that she would crack a tooth flashed into her head.  She flexed her jaw from side to side the way her dentist had shown her.

Petra, her eldest, was seventeen and not quite licence-ready and, after seventeen years of trying to get kids in the car, Lana was over it.

‘I’m going now. See you later.’ She let go of the screen door and let it slam behind her.

Once, she’d threatened that she’d leave if they weren’t ready and had driven off. The resulting grief she’d been assaulted with from the kids and her husband wasn’t worth it.

They came tumbling like puppies out of bedrooms and banged their way down the hallway. Herding cats had nothing on herding her three.

After the kids tumbled out of the car in the Kiss and Drive Zone, she took a breath–her first conscious breath of the day. How often did she feel she was holding her breath and dying from oxygen deprivation? Every. Single. Day.

Horns sounded behind her. She'd broken the rules and hadn’t moved on after dropping the kids off. There’d been no kisses either. She was a bad mum. A bad school community citizen.  A bad wife too. Apparently.

She put Lucy, her scratched-up 2005 Subaru, into drive, edged forward and waited for the 4WD in front to move. Lucy was still going after two hundred thousand kilometres and was more faithful than her husband had turned out to be. She ground her teeth again and wondered how much it would cost when her teeth finally cracked.

The 4WD pulled out and she slotted in behind it. A  long, rude beep shot through her and her heart almost jumped up into her throat and strangled her. She’d almost hit a BMW that had obviously given up waiting for her. A blonde, Lorna Jane-clad mum whizzed past and shook her ponytail in disgust.

Lana’s heart raced and her foot quivered so much she could hardly press the accelerator. She forced her face into an apologetic smile that was too fake and too late.

Tears threatened to turn to sobs and she turned towards home. There was no way she could face an office full of people who looked at her for direction. She was a digital copyright lawyer and the thought of talking about fair use when she felt used, abused and neglected was too much. Her life wasn’t fair use. 

In most people’s worlds, it was spring–the season of new life and new beginnings. In her world, there were only endings–the break-up of her marriage, her youngest’s last year of primary school, her eldest’s last year of high school. Never mind the perimenopausal body that reminded her that she couldn’t compete with a twenty-something’s tautness.

It was one of those days. It was one of those years. It was the end of her rope.

She phoned work and told them she was taking a mental health day in accordance with the last EBA agreement.

When she got home, she peeled off her suit and put her pyjamas on. Was 9 am too early for wine?

She scrolled through the highlight reels on Instagram. Perfect hair. Perfect teeth. Perfect smiles. Perfect lives. She threw her phone into her Prada handbag. Her one perfect possession. She stroked it and felt her breath slow. It was her touchstone. Her proof that she was a successful person. She owned a Prada bag. Genuine Prada, not Bali-fake Prada.

She closed her eyes and wondered how she’d arrived here.

When she was little she took toothpicks and paddle pop sticks and glued them together into houses and towns. Miniature plastic people lived in the houses and the families who lived there had perfect lives.

Lana made up names, created stories, sang songs, and even danced, as she created a world within her world. There was nothing more she loved than making things, but she couldn’t think of a time in the last twenty years that she’d made something besides dinner.

If anyone had asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, it would have been a builder or an architect or a dancer, but she'd been corralled by her parents into law.

Her oldest child’s craft table was littered with a rainbow of paper clippings, glue sticks, textas, glitter, dried petals, and other dross of making. Petra knew how to create. She hadn’t grown out of it, even when her siblings teased her, even when her friends laughed at her, even when her mother told her to grow up.

Shame washed over her like a hot flush. How dare she treat her daughter like that? Squash her fun. Wound her with criticism.

Before he left, her husband told her she was disengaged, disinterested, and disillusioned. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He was going to live with a girl half his age who was fun, exciting and most of all, interested.

His words seared her soul. She thought she’d been doing the right thing. Working hard. Taking care of everyone else. Making all the pieces fit together.

But now the pieces were scattered. They flew out of her control like bean bag beans—once they escaped they flew to every corner. You could never get them all, even with a Dyson.

She picked up some coloured paper and began cutting it into triangles. Red. Blue. Purple. Green. Yellow. Black. She picked up a piece of white paper and glued the triangles into a mosaic. It felt good to stick those little pieces in place, even though she had no idea of what pattern would be created.

When she stood back she could see a maze. A purple path wove through multi-coloured obstacles and ended up in the centre. A smile tweaked at the edges of her mouth and her heart danced a few beats. She’d made something. Just for the sake of making. 

Her life was complicated, messy, busy, full of shame, and boredom. But, it was her life.

She could feel something deep in her belly. A stirring. A revelation. An epiphany. 

She grabbed a pencil and sketched a woman standing at the entrance to the maze.

Today her life would begin. Again.