It doesn’t take much to discourage someone. I was two years out of high school and into my second year of college. I had taken a few orientation classes and a drawing class, and one day a professor (let’s call him Jerky McJerkface), pulled me aside and told me, “You know, I don’t think art is for you.” No prior explanation, no real understanding as to what logical leaps were made to decide verbally that what I liked to do was not meant for me.
I was devastated. I would drop out of the class and fail (which may have been a questionable decision in retrospect but there was little impetus to remain in the class). From there I just stopped. I was made to believe that I made the wrong decision to be creative in any meaningful way. Maybe it was an overreaction?
Let’s back up.
I found an early interest in drawing and writing in grade school and drew when I could (and drew when I shouldn’t have), and I would continue doodling throughout junior high and high school. My parents were okay with me drawing and writing, but they felt that I would probably be better off with music or sports (both of which I sucked at). I came into this world as a sci-fi and comic nerd. I devoured comic books and I watched as much sci-fi as I could (I also stayed up way too late when I shouldn’t have to watch episodes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and thus indoctrinating my future sense of dry British-originated non-sequitur sense of humor, but I digress).
I wanted to draw comics the Marvel Way. Even owned the book of the same name. I wanted to build with Lego and take things apart to see how they worked. I wanted to do animation and became an animation nerd. Want to know what inbetweens, keyframes or drawing on the twos are? I know.
I loved creating and in a sentence, all of that was gone. I felt the words as it infected my soul, enveloped my psyche and destroyed my already fragile ego. Maybe if I was a more assertive or stronger person – I could have pushed back and proved Jerky McJerkface wrong – but I’m a very sensitive person and I wear my heart on my sleeve – so it was easy to tell when it was broken. I didn’t overreact, I reacted in the way that was me at the time.
I didn’t draw. I didn’t build. I didn’t write. I mostly stopped creating. Crying didn’t come easily as the frustration and anger were much more dominant (and easier to manifest) at that time.
That was over twenty years ago. Sure I did a few creative things now and then, but nowhere near my previous output.
My wife (who is totally beautiful and awesome) noticed a couple of years ago that I did not do anything creative (or if I did, it was very rare). She asked me about it but I didn’t really delve into it. I hid it from her as if the discouragement I got back in college was something I was ashamed of.
Then one year at a convention, my wife and I were in an art panel on releasing your creativity. We were given sheets of paper and told to draw basic shapes and I froze.
Twenty years of creative famine caused me to lose all emotional and physical responses. No reaction. Just horror.
I was staring at a blank sheet of paper. My upcoming emotional breakdown would come in the form of a mirror without a reflection of endless possibilities.
My wife noticed.
It hit me. The pent up emotion, the anger, the everything. The tears finally came.
It has been a few years since that episode. My wife knows my struggle and is trying to get me to create, and it’s hard. I won’t lie. It’s been tough.
This is why I’ve been writing so much. I’m trying to get my groove back. My wife thinks that I should go into therapy as a way to help and I’m seriously considering it. In the end, it took a person who was encouraging out of a place of love to help me back through a major creative block on the way to once again be creative – and not be ashamed of it.
After writing all this, the takeaway is that you should actively encourage from a place of love and free from judgment. After all, the world got mostly nothing from me in twenty years and maybe it’s time I shared with the world what my passion is, whatever form that takes.
Written by Chris Murdock
