to cost you

It needs to cost you something. The creativity, it needs to cost you. Otherwise all you’re doing is taking the edge off.  

I spent the first 19 years of my life in desperate attempt to communicate, anything and everything. My heart and my mind, form and colour were my first languages and it made speaking hard. I previously wrote that if no-one ever bothered to teach me English I would have found a way to speak through pictures and the visual, imagery. I stand by that, it was my first language. 

Somewhere along the way, between 18 and 19, I found writing. Not that I hadn’t ever written before that, but not like this. Even today, as I sit here trying to communicate about communicating I’m having a hard time finding the exact words. But I found the words that finally conveyed all that was occurring inside. 

Where 22 bled into 23 I started writing my first novel, and it cost me something. I had been a dancer, a painter, even tested my pipes at the choir, but none of them cost me what writing did. I remember one day when I was about half way through my first draft, I remember I said to my mom, my head is empty. She asked if I was alright. I had never been better. 

See I had tried my hand at numerous forms of creative expression, had tried every creative outlet I could get my hands on. Not one of them cost me what writing did. To this day it continues to cost everything I have to give, all my creative energy and more. 

The last two weeks of writing my second novel have remained me of this, truly my head is once again empty and it is such a sweet relief. I am of the belief that all human beings are creative beings, because we are created beings, and as such we all have creative energy that is meant to be spent. The energy, the possibility, swirls around in us until such a time comes along that we spend that energy creating and making. 

I know it to be true for myself because I am a calmer person when I am creating, or at least after I’m done creating. Nothing else in this life has cost me the same thing, in the same way, that writing a first draft does. It has become such a freeing experience for me. 

Even if I never “make it,” never become “successful,” I’ll keep on writing stories for as long as I breath, because it empties my head. And for me, as someone who has too much creative energy and not enough time to spend it all, having it cost me something is sweet. 

And here's the funnier piece of all this, the more you spend that energy the more it comes back to you. The more words I expel from my mind the more are added to it. The energy is not finite or un-replenish-able, it is a renewable resource if you are willing to treat it as such. 

It needs to cost you something. In order for it to give you something, it needs to cost you.