Your River of Creativity: Change is Inevitable
Map, choices, starting again, and personal work.
I recently came across Harold Fisk’s Mississippi Maps, and a thought popped into my mind. Though this is a geographic image, it could stand in for my creative career, and likely for many others as well. Fisk—a geologist and cartographer working for the US Army Corps of Engineers—traced the ever-shifting banks of the Mississippi River to illustrate a rather dry government report on “the nature and origin of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River,” which made me snort in laughter. It is much like my career. There hasn’t been one resounding, exciting, spectacular moment that I went from non-artist to artist, from not writing to writing. It is a slow progression, much like the Mississippi, coming in stages of development. While the river was impacted by settlers building dams, deforestation, new courses dug, and on and on, my path has been impacted by the economy, relationships, personal struggles, leaps of faith, failures, and, when lucky, some wins.
There is only so much one can control when growing and forming new ideas, skills, and evolving as a human being. It is the subtle things that we can control that change our own path over time.
If you were to look back now and draw your own changing path, what would it look like?
I know for myself, it would include my painting, photography, school choices, and career fears. Where I was too scared to take a risk, or places where I made sudden decisions—quitting a job, moving cities, taking on a project I was scared of.
In these moments, the choices can feel scary. But when we pull back and see this flow, evolution, and natural movement, it all becomes less worrisome.
So what it really comes down to is this: when these changes happen, is it because you dug in and worked to adjust your life? Or was it because someone showed up with a shovel and decided to dig on your behalf?
Much like these maps represent the lower Mississippi’s “meander belt,” a life, creative career, or even an idea will shift and change in unexpected ways.
Here is what I am taking away from this:
Life will change. When I have the ability to affect the flow, I will. And when I cannot, I will remember that the water will keep flowing. There is more to come. The focus is to create from a place of hope and possibility, rather than a place of fear and scarcity.
The water will keep flowing. Barriers be damned, it will find a path.
What I was watching this week:
A beautiful video. With a wonderful message.
Start again.
Reading this week:
A nice reminder, that ‘it’s worth trying to get a handle on our own patterns—it keeps us from getting too down when things stall, and it keeps us from getting overconfident when we hit a patch of effortless productivity.’
My quick and dirty notes based on the prompt in the article:
Personal Work:
Last week, we drove to Alberta for a friend's wedding. As a photographer, I offered to bring my camera, and I'm so glad I did. I may not be a wedding photographer, but I can certainly share my skill with loved ones when possible.
A while back I wrote about taking photos of the people in your life, and though that time it was a sad reason to write about it. This time it is a joyous. So pulling from that article:
Take photos of your loved ones.
Capture your friends.
Cherish the moments in between.
Pose them if you must.
Now, for the images below, I am sharing only a select few as I didn’t want to share images of kids and family without permission. So, you get some vibey photos and the happy couple.
Hey you made it to the end! I have a little secret for you!
I hoard SD cards.
It is a problem.
I have a fear that I will lose photos.
So rather than automatically clearing a card after photoshoots, I tend to hold on to them and have built up a little pile. I don’t have hundreds, but I do have enough that this week I went through most of them and marked them for ‘clear immediately’ or noted which images I want to back up elsewhere, as they were the reason I didn’t clear the card.
You may wonder where this issue started. It began when I accidentally formatted the wrong card and lost client work. The level of panic I felt at that moment left a deep impression.
I do have external hard drives, and guess what? My Lacie failed and won’t connect. Now another one (different brand, different model) is doing the same, despite simply sitting there as the final backup of completed projects. So yeah, I am trying to figure out a way to store things I really want to keep in a way that won’t fall apart.
As an anxious Virgo, this is a nightmare.
But I am determined that by the end of the summer, my little ‘messy storage issue’ will be fixed.
Wish me luck.