Creativity and A Tortured Mind - In Response To: Are All Bloggers Mentally Ill?

Inspired by Imperfect Pages' Musings on Creativity I am writing a blog post that rounds up a few of the thoughts I have been having recently.  When I say a few, I mean just that, they are only a few of the thoughts I am sharing with you, because my mind has not shut up at all, it has been on overdrive and I've been Tweeting like a maniac to reflect this usually whilst doing a gazillion other things at the same time.  I thought I was going to get away without having the January blues, then a bloody great nasty soul migraine kicked in rendering me useless to even finish this post that I started two weeks ago.

Thoughts about creativity were initially sparked off by The A Residence when she wrote a post about the  great community that has been found within Twitter and blogging.  I am continuously amazed at how supportive and talented people are within this community. Another post by the brilliant From Marketing to Milk - "Are All Bloggers Mentally Ill?"  hit a familiar note with me as I keep seeing depression, tumbling out onto the pages of the most entertaining, sharp witted and hilarious voices, time and time again when I read blogs.  I have written before on a similar topic Echoes of Talent in Art and War - Is Talent Genetic?  The  more blogs I read though, the more sadness and turmoil can be found simmering beneath the surfaces of the people that in turn create the best words and photography who's pages are full of adroitness.  All my most creative real life friends are held back at times by crippling depression, huge doses of procrastination or just really bad days where they just can't seem to get anything done.  I'm not just talking about a bit of PMT pissy mood time here.  I see it in men and women, I see a lot of booze consumed in order to self medicate,  I see a lot of prescriptions being handed out.  I get a lot of phone calls with nothing but a sniffling sound coming out from the other end.  Some of us are better at hiding it than others and some of us are able to share it in such a way that it is almost funny.

One of my friends and I used to really be into the Taoism and the Barefoot Doctor he suggests such meditations as "Scooping the loop,"  but if we were having a bad day, we'd look at each other or send a text just saying, "I'm scooping the poop."  It just summed everything up, including a complete inability to even scoop the loop.  There's a lot of people feeling the poo right now.  It's January, it's miserable, it's dark out, we're skint and over indulged.  January is usually my most creative month.  Most of my poetry is written in January, granted it's all a bit Sylvia Plath.  It's tortured, it's painful it reflects my inner being and not the happy go lucky person that I usually am. It does not make for light reading, but there's enough of it to make a book.  Most people who have read it don't like it very much, it's uncomfortable and probably not very good. When I read it sometimes I feel the same, but there is a place out there for everything and the book is out there.

Sometimes, a soul migraine just takes over, it takes over your everything your very being and you can't remember feeling any other way or imagine feeling any other way. The creativity is hampered, it grinds to a halt, the bed, the sofa, sometimes the floor becomes where it's at.  Distress and all those painful experiences we've buried so well bubble up to the surface and just don't want to go away.  I think the most creative people are often the most sensitive people.  I love people with multi-faceted personalities, they are the most interesting.  I don't want to read a blog where every day was the most "perfect" day ever.  Where the sun is always shining, where the children are always well behaved, where the writer has a fabulous wardrobe and a doting husband.  Yawn.  Life is just not like that.  It's all the ups and downs we go through that makes us who we are.  It's what makes us human beings able to share, nurture and amuse which is why I believe some of the best blogs out there are nourished by creative but tortured minds.