There is a picture of a pier on a wall where I work. It stretches out over a placid blue sea where grey clouds hover just above the surface in odd shaped boats and hearts. It is dusk and the lights are on. In the distance, yellow lights illuminate life on distant islands. My little pier is empty. It is illuminated just to look out on other shores where richer people than I are living richer lives than mine. It reminds me of The Great Gatsby.

In The Great Gatsby, a poor man fell in love with a rich girl and spent all his efforts to build riches to win her. Though she is married to another man, he still builds a mansion across the bay and looks out across the end of his pier to the green light beaconing from her house to his. It doesn’t end well, but the beauty of his love for her and his willingness to work hard for an impossible dream is an inspiration. It is what I think of when I think of the American dream.

Creativity is like that.

I used to think that words were endless. I would have no shortage of ideas to share or people to listen. Then I discovered new art forms.

When I was exploring painting, I made things up as I went along. I played with paint and glue and ketchup bottles and made my own Jackson Pollack-like painting with embedded words and pictures in the paint. People still stand in awe of that painting and want to buy it.

When I started baking castle cakes, I had a base recipe and experimented from there. I made a castle shaped cake that was split diagonally in half as chocolate and vanilla. I took it to a party and it became all the rage to do again and again in different flavors. I made homemade sorbets to pair with the cakes too. My favorite was a mixed fruit pair that tasted like Juicy Fruit gum.

A friend taught me how to knit and purl, and I was smitten. I took two sticks and started playing with yarn. I figured out how to cable stitch and create different knit textures. I made several scarves freestyling this way before I ever figured out how to read a pattern. It was something my more accomplished friend said she wouldn’t dare to do.

I have been actively exploring a great many creative gifts. It is my passion and my guilty pleasure, but I have learned it may be the reason my writing has gone silent from time to time.

I will let you in on a little secret: I don’t think creativity really leaves us. I think it migrates to other forms of expression. When I was painting and baking and knitting, I wasn’t writing as much. I left the words alone on the pier so I could go party in the greener pastures of my other creative endeavors.

Sometimes creativity in one area takes away from creativity in another. We have a dominant creative voice, for me, it is writing, and when we pull too far from it we start to miss it so much we aren’t whole till it is back in our lives.

Something else about creativity is that it takes discipline and hard work. It is easy to play with different expressions of creativity as an outlet; it is a whole different thing to hone one’s skills into a well-crafted art. We have to make time for ourselves to work on our gifts even when time itself seems to be working against us.

Sometimes creativity migrates; other times it hides. Doubt, stress, and the sheer responsibilities of life keep us from being our best selves.

I have a goal to blog weekly on this blog, seasonally on bairnsbard, and as needed on whitmansacademics. Every week that I got behind on my own deadlines to write made me feel like a failure. The guilt compounded till my words ran dry and over a month of blog posts passed me by. I regret that.

Recently, a local newspaper featured me on a front page story about my blogging and teaching. It reminded me of my responsibility to my writing and to my readers. After some priming, the words returned to the well.

When you think you are in a creative block, have you noticed yourself expressing yourself creatively in other areas of your life? Share your experiences in the comments below.