Creativity

My creativity usually comes out in the form of my first love – music. I’ve been writing songs since I was about 7 (although I’m not sure ‘listen to the people crying, listen to the people dying’ are my best lyrics…) and properly since about 17.

I started by covering other people’s songs and posting them on Youtube, which a few people seemed to like. It was fun, I enjoyed the feedback, but there was something different about writing and posting my own material. Unfortunately it never quite got the same response. And I definitely don’t have the talent, confidence or ambition to really go for it with my own stuff as a career; I don’t even like the songs I write most of the time. However, there is something really satisfying of playing or hearing back a creation that is completely yours and has come out of your own mind.

In my first couple of weeks of moving to Italy, I found that the moment I tried to go to sleep was when inspiration came, so I half-asleepedly wrote down lyrics on my phone to put to music later on. But when it came to writing the music, I still wasn’t happy with the outcome.

It’s only recently as I’ve been blogging more frequently that I’ve realised I’ve just transferred my creativity into this instead. I think of an idea for a post and I write it down really quickly, just like when I write songs. Except, it’s so much easier!

I tend to panic whilst songwriting – I wonder if a chord progression is nice enough or too cheesy, are the lyrics too boring, will people like it, is it too sad? I study music at university so I always feel my songs have to be ‘clever’ or ‘technical’ enough musically and lyrically (which I’m usually a bit crap at but I’ll end up being marked on it in final year…).

Whereas I don’t know much about actual writing. I don’t know what’s good or bad, what’s fun or not fun to read. What’s ‘correct’ and what’s not. And that’s ok because I’m not writing to show off my grammatical skills or my sentence structures - I’m just documenting bits of my life at the moment.

But it’s really, really nice to have found another way of letting out thoughts and things. And I’ve found the same satisfaction that I had with music in writing posts – you have an idea, get it all written down, then give it some structure and whatever else until you’re happy with it. And I now get the same satisfied feeling that I used to get when clicking ‘Upload’ on YouTube as I now do with clicking ‘Publish’ on Blogger.

Whether someone chooses to look at it or not, I don’t mind. It’s just a little space to write out my thoughts and document my photos and experiences and it’s mine, all mine.