One of the things I (have come to) like most about the Thanksgiving tradition is taking a moment to reflect on what we’re grateful for.
While toecurlingly unguarded for an uninitiated Brit, it is a valuable exercise. So, in the spirit of the season…
One of the things I am most grateful for over the last year is rediscovering my identity as a creative person.
The injustice of small business
One of the strange injustices of growing a small business is that over time, the thing that got you into doing what you’re doing falls off your list of responsibilities. It might be flower arranging, personal training, or filmmaking.
If you’re good at something, you tend to love doing it. If you’re good enough, people will pay you to do it. If you’re then good enough at that, they will pay you to pay other people to do it.
Before you know it, you’re not doing the thing you love but running a business instead. A very different beast – which can be hugely fulfilling in its own way – from the thing you loved in the first place.
I spend a lot of time on here talking about the business bit. Far less about the creative bit.
Once a filmmaker
Before running Casual became a full-time job, I spent most of my time making films. Coming up with ideas, travelling the world, and producing and directing all over the place. It gave me something immensely tangible as an outlet for my energies.
The fact that the work was well recognised and won awards was fantastic. We built this company and, in time, the creativity I had in the workplace focused on that instead. But it’s not the same. I haven’t made a proper film in over a decade!
The last couple of years of running any company have been a journey. That might be an understatement for some of you. One of the most important ways I have found to deal with that is through rediscovering my innate creativity.
All humans are creative
I fiercely believe that all humans are creative. It is a fundamental aspect of the human condition. I can’t bear it when people say: ‘Oh, I’ll leave that to you creative types – I don’t have a creative bone in my body.’
If you don’t believe me, try a brief thought experiment. Take the most ‘non-creative’ member of your finance department and shipwreck them on a desert island for a month. I’m sure you’d be stunned by the amount of creativity that they can access in the pursuit of survival.
A cry for help from a trapped creative
From the moment my first daughter asked for a ‘Fire Truck’ (Americanised from the off!) for her second birthday, I have made elaborate birthday cakes for my kids and some of our friends’ kids.
My mates joke that I must be making up for some unseen shortcoming, which sounds like it could be right. For a time, these cakes were a way of showing I cared with a bit of imagination and creativity.
But they were also something else - a cry for help from a creative person who now spends the majority of my working life peering at either Zoom, Slack, Google Sheets, or maybe, if I’m lucky, Keynote/PowerPoint.
Getting back to mud
Last year, a pottery studio opened in our neighbourhood and has absolutely exploded in popularity. I played it cool for a couple of months as I was travelling a fair bit, and by the time I went in to join, I had to join the waiting list for four months (!).
Since then, they have opened a further three studios, which are all now fully subscribed. Plainly, the people of San Francisco, the high altar of the 'Priests of the Screen', are screaming out for the ability to unplug and make things out of mud, away from the endless nonsense and superficiality.
Rediscovering me
And so a few times a week, after the kids are in bed, I head down there to make vases, bowls, and sculptures. Maybe I’ll put on a (non-news) podcast and zone in while I take ideas from my core and make them real and tangible in the world.
Kingfishers, dogs, vases, bees, and willow trees. If I can imagine it, I make it. I don’t go as much as I would like, so the projects are slower than I’d like, but I get there in the end. I now have so many ideas planned. In time, I’d love to have an exhibition. That might be a way off.
It doesn’t matter the day I have had it gives me the most incredible sense of relaxation, calm, and achievement. It enables me to be the person I am in my mind’s eye. A person I had become slightly untethered from, with everything that your forties throw at you.
And for that. I am grateful.
What is the thing that you need to get back to to really be yourself? What activity have you lost touch with? Cooking? Art? Amateur dramatics? Maybe just reading a book for your own enjoyment of it?
What are you grateful for at this time of year?
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