When I was little my mother told me

From the Notes app. Dated March 30, 2023

20 January 2025

When I was little my mother told me I was good at creating more than I consumed. What a silly thing to say for a mother who did not let her kids watch television or play computer games on weekdays, who did not allow any video games in the home except Pac Man with a real life joystick from the 80s. Of course I was creating. If I wasn't creating, I was reading, and an argument can be made that reading is half-creating because you have to come up with those little pictures in your head by yourself. And then of course if I read a book then I was summoned to write one or two, because it did not seem that hard when I was 9. Also because when you're little, adults tell you things about yourself and then you have no choice but to believe them, and my mother told me I was creative.

Dad threatened to put a glass mason jar by the printer so I could drop a dollar bill in every time I used color ink.

For Christmas, I asked for cardstock paper and a laminator.

The way I saw it, there was so much to create. The ideas spilled out of my ears and mouth like goo that wasn't quite solid and not quite liquid and could slowly seep through the gaps in my skull. There was too much music, literature, and art already in the world that I felt a sense of urgency to create before my idea was taken. If I waited a few years or even a few moments, the idea might be whisked away by a poet or teacher or author or composer in a different country who had never heard of me.

So, now as a Student at a University, I think a lot about that balancing scale of producing and consuming. I consume knowledge, television, literature so often that it feels like eating a big meal with a paper-y texture that leaves words on my tongue and in the front of my brain, right behind my eyeballs. I worry I consume more than I create. When I create, it's often homework assignments I am forced to complete or essays I'm forced to write. I still write music and crochet on occasion, but the see-saw that used to host 50 lbs. of Creative on one side and 5 lbs. of Consumer on the other has started tipping the opposite way. I'm hoping I stocked up on enough creative momentum when I was younger to hold me over until I have more free time and can write and draw and compose a little more.

If I were to chart how my personal Hierarchy of Needs has changed over time, I think the little trapezoid labeled "Creating" would slowly move toward the top, but never disappear. Now that I am a Student at a University, I have to worry about things like food, housing, and education. These are things that were relatively absent from my 6-year-old pyramid. So it's nothing to be upset about that Creating has inch-wormed itself up to the peak of the pyramid. It's great news that it's still up there! I'm grateful for the little gnawing younger-me I have in my chest that says "When we get home, if there's time, why don't we paint?" She says, "Tomorrow is a free day. Let's go to the DI and buy a piano and then we can play it as much as we like." Sometimes she says, "Put your phone down. Let's write a book. Let's sew a shirt. Let's go outside and collect leaves and sticks and put them in our journal so we can remember what it feels like to live in Utah in the Fall." Of course it's difficult to argue with her. She is often wiser than I am. But sometimes she says, "Why do we have to go to school again? We went yesterday. How about today we stay in bed and crochet a beanie?" She is paranoid about the urgency of it all. But I'm grateful for that part of me, reminding me how much I love to create.

Now I probably consume a little bit more than I create. Probably a lot more. And of course that's only natural because now I get to be at a part of life where I decide where I want to live, what I want to learn, what I want to buy, and who I want to see. It's nothing to be upset about. It's something to smile warmly about, like when you look at an old photo. The important part is, I still want to write books and paint scenes and crochet little hats and compose symphonies because part of me still believes it does not seem that hard. Because when I was little, my mom told me I was creative, and I believed her.