An interesting thing happened a couple of years ago. I belonged to a community list-serve, which I largely ignored. But one day I got an e-mail from the list from someone talking about starting a new group locally for “creatives.” It said that whoever considered themselves creative was invited to attend something called “Refresh Bryan/College Station,” or “Refresh BCS.” I thought, “hmm, that sounds like me.” So I went.
What a shock I was in for. It wasn’t about art, or music, or writing, it was about computers. At the time I wasn’t aware of any overlap among those things. My creativity mostly involved pencils and paper, sometimes paints and brushes, and my computer was only another writing tool, with some incidental research and communication functions thrown in. At the meeting, I kept hearing about design, and I heard things like “twitter,” and “flikr,” and “facebook,” which had no meaning at all to me at the time. But I was intrigued, and thought I might be able to learn something, so I went to another meeting the next month, and another the next. I still felt like I was in another country where I didn’t understand the language, but the natives were friendly, didn’t seem to mind my advanced age, and it certainly gave me an excuse to get out of the house.
Of course, when someone says “Do you stumble?” my first thought is, “well, sometimes when I get new shoes, because my left foot is a little longer than my right… (and by the way, what an odd question),” but that’s not at all what they mean, I feel totally out of it. These days I know different. I almost said better, but I’ll reserve judgment for now. Now I know how to Stumble, and how to use Delicious, and I’m on Twitter and Facebook and MySpace and Linkdin and Digg. All these things are supposed to help me network and increase readership on my blog and get me noticed by people who can help me in my career or just invite me to more social gatherings. But none of it changes the fact that I’m a frakking megaintrovert and unless I’m forcing myself the whole time, I just sort of let those social things slide.
It’s ironic that all the advice givers say you have to be willing to work hard at what you love to be able to make a living at it. To me the hard work is all this peripheral stuff. I almost don’t have the energy to do the work I really love. Go figure.
the word “creative”, to me, is a really subjective term. To me, one that a lot of artists appropriated a long time ago to make themselves sound “cooler”.
If you are a social innovator, does that not make you creative?
If you can bring life to a bunch of symbols and letters to have them interact with a human being, does that not make you creative?
At least as creative as reproducing what the eye sees in oil if you as me.
To me, creativity has more to do with how we interpret things, not how we see them.
My degree is in Environmental Design but I am less of an artist than a technician. I feel more comfortable behind a keyboard than a paintbrush. I think this is mostly to due with the fact that I’m always afraid my art is going to be judged harshly because I’m almost 30 and my art is probably as sophisticated as that of a thirteen year old.
I’m not saying there aren’t welcoming art communities out there, but I’ve never experienced one.
The tech community embraced me with open arms and without reservation at age 22, and that fact is the reason I am as proficient as I am today.
I think the difference in openness I’ve experienced in the tech vs. the art community is the relative differences in age of each. Traditional art is full of well, traditions. The world of computer technology really doesn’t have that many.
In my experience when communities cling to tradition over everything else, they drive people away.
Hopefully I’ll meet an artist someday that will mentor me the way I’ve tried to be a mentor to people in the tech world.
This is why I think I need to hang out with the tech crowd. Never did like “traditions” even while a student at a school ate up with them!
Just call it “primitive” and you’ll be a hit.
I’m surprised that you think you are a megaintrovert. Aren’t you the one who volunteers at the collection (emphasis on “volunteer”)? Aren’t you the one who . . . belongs to the kennel club and helps out with their events . . . volunteers for the arthritis foundation . . . works the polling site on voting day . . . belongs to Veterans for Peace . . . belonged to the red hat society for a while . . . takes watercolor classes . . . submits her art for juried art shows . . .
…but that’s not me. That’s my evil twin, Skippy.