Epiphanies {Part 1}

I had a couple Epiphanies.

I had two specific unexpected insights a couple weeks ago  – something of The Happiness Project might refer to as “A Secret of Adulthood”.

One of those epiphanies you might have heard a thousand times but didn’t really understand…

…until suddenly it applies to you in a really personal way.

One of those gems that makes perfect sense in retrospect.

One of those… well… it ain’t called an insight for nothin’.

Kids are awesome.

That observation is not one of my Epiphanies. I already knew this to be true.

My nine-year-old daughter plays this weird video game called Minecraft. I’m sure you have heard of it. If I know it, you must as well.

Anyway, she plays it on what’s referred to as “Creative Mode”. I heard this repeated over and over, and it never sunk in until that moment of clarity that, if there is a Creative Mode, there must, likewise, be an UN-creative Mode, too.

Or that there might, in fact, be not just two, but several modes. As Epiphanies go, this might not seem like a big deal, but hear me out.

I’m not really a hardcore gamer, and as long as the game in question is “clean” – which is to say, free of naughty language, violence, gore, sexual innuendo, etc. – then I don’t really pay attention to the details. Minecraft, in particular, can entertain my kiddo for hours on end, and I don’t mind the time she spends on it because she is transfixed with creating houses and traps and buildings and bridges and roller coasters and… stuff.

She makes something, she tweaks it, she fixes it, she repairs it, she changes it, she perfects it.

And then she destroys it and starts all over.

I watch this activity for only a few minutes at a time. It seems completely boring to me. There is no story line, no puzzles to solve, no riddles to untangle, no challenges to overcome.

It’s like watching her draw these intricate pictures on her dry-erase board, which she immediately wipes clean before I can even snap a shot.

She creates with ease.

And deletes her creations.

And begins again.

No recrimination over that which was lost.

No tears for the time spent making and building and bringing to fruition.

Art for art’s sake.

That was the first of my Epiphanies.

I have forgotten what it’s like to make something for the pure joy of making it. Everything I create is a task, a project, a duty to perform. It’s work. It requires a specific resolution or ending point, and there absolutely must be a point beyond the journey itself. Writing, for me, has moved outside the realm of art for art’s sake.

This isn’t a horrible realization.

There is a difference between hobby & passion.

What my daughter does is purely for fun. It’s a hobby, like humming under her breath as she works to complete her math homework, or like reading before bed time. A hobby is something you enjoy escaping to; it saves you from the worst parts of yourself by reminding you that life is not all harsh, cold, reality. A hobby frees you from decision-making and responsibility. A hobby is fun.

Art for art’s sake is, in essence, a hobby.

A passion, on the other hand, takes what once might have merely been a hobby and turns it into a personal priority. It forces you to learn more and more about it, so that you can perfect your craft. It becomes a thing of great import around which you center your goals and dreams.

A passion becomes your life, and is a job all its own.

There’s a fine line between passion & obsession.

A person lacking in passion might easily confuse another person’s passion as obsession. It’s happened to every creative ever: A well-meaning but dried up soul says you need to grow up and get a “real” job.

Don’t listen. The person lacking in passion is not the one you want as your guide.

As for obsession, that’s a post for a different day. I’m not qualified to opine on a topic of which I have little experience. To my mind, obsession is equivalent to addiction, which is the unhealthy side of creativity. I’m addicted to Coca-Cola, and I smoke, so I do understand the physical pull of obsession and addiction. But as it applies to art? Not so much.

Back to art for art’s sake…

There is something to be said for the relaxed creative journey. For making something that doesn’t matter. For getting sloppy and lazy and just throwing some shit together. I can’t do that in my writing. It’s too important to me – I’m too passionate to be relaxed about it.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a bit of a perfectionist and have a difficult time not editing as I go. I’ve gotten better – just tell the story and go back for corrections and better word choice later, because you can’t rewrite what has never been written in the first place. I get that.

But I do not, in any way whatsoever, write with a relaxed hand.

I care too much about the outcome.

So I need a hobby.

Lucky for me, my sister pulled me into the crazy, colorful world of scrapbooking.

Here’s the thing: I forget to take pictures of most events, and when I do remember, I usually snap them from my iPod as opposed to some fancy-pants camera. And I never use Instagram or Photoshop or any of those weird, scary fix-it programs with filters and frames and what-have-you. I very much live in the moment, and once a picture is taken, I move on.

That’s not to say I won’t take five shots in a row to ensure I get a good one, but while I will delete the crappy images, I never pretty-up the keepers.

So the idea of not only taking pictures, but remembering to print them out to place in albums, was a bit daunting. I had a really hard time with it. In all the years I have been scrapping with my sis, I think I have only actually gone to the trouble of printing pics maybe three times.

The hobby, for me, is not in the pictures. It lies in making the layouts FOR the pictures.

I know, I know. I’m weird.

Why make all these gorgeous layouts for pictures I still haven’t printed? Because that’s my hobby. Here is a craft in which I can engage in a relaxed fashion. I get sloppy. I don’t follow instructions. I change up THIS stamp for THAT sticker instead. I am the laziest scrapper you ever met. I hardly measure anything, and I forget to take proper care of my tools, and I seriously DO.NOT.CARE. how the final product turns out.

Like my daughter’s dry-erase board, I complete a layout and close it up in an album, never to be seen again. It’s the most awesome feeling in the world.

Art for art’s sake.

Who cares about the completed project? Not the artist who is enjoying the process of making, creating, doing, delving, giving, having, moving, living. Scrapbooking is my hobby, and I treat it as such.

Scrapbooking is my Hobby.

Writing is my passion.

And boy can you see the difference between the two – both in approach and technique, as well as in how things turn out. Just ask my artist sister how ugly my layouts are. She won’t hesitate to tell you that I am a seriously BAD scrapper.

And that’s okay.

I have found something I don’t mind sucking at. It’s not writing.

I must perfect my writing.

Next week I’ll fill you in on the second of my Epiphanies. It was equally thought-provoking.

TRUST.

• Have you ever had an “a-ha!” moment with regard to how you view your children?
• Do you engage in “art for art’s sake” via a hobby?
• Is there something about which you are passionate that brings out the perfectionist in you?