Geographical/generational creative healing.

I re-enrolled at college recently. Just in an adult course — although I say ‘just’, when it’s actually been really special and wholesome for me, OK — studying/making in a field that’s always fascinated me, but isn’t necessarily what I’m ‘meant’ to be doing, or intend to do as a proper job.

‘just’, ‘proper’ — wow, c’mon G. Have some gumption. Btw, did any of you enjoy the ‘live edits’/tongue-in-cheek editorial decisions in my last post? No worries if not. oh no, now that too?!

In case you missed it…

Anyway, in this day and age we’ve all been taught (and/or forced, by other people and the financial climate sh*t show of it all) to monetise everything we do. It’s not been a fun time. However, I feel like we’re slowly coming out from under this pattern of pressure and a lot of us* are reconnecting with ourselves, exploring curiosities and using creativity to heal in a lot of ways. Inner children are being beckoned and held more than ever before, by the sound of it.

*I am painfully aware that this could just be my particular neck of the woods, geographically and generationally. I live in a very creative seaside town where money for the most part isn’t a ‘huge thing’ — except when it really is — and my thirty-something peers around here while also chattering in my social media echo chamber are all saying the same thing so??

…all of this to say, it feels cathartic and joyous but still slightly rebellious to be doing something almost entirely for the fun and fascination. At least, from the beginning — I’ve now decided to start yet another small side hustle with the bits and bobs I’m making in class, but that’s not a serious thing, I swear!

I think the same could be said for the 8-week experimental fiction course I attended recently. Well, it’s hopefully going to help me with that big project I’ve been pushing up a hill for many years now, but for the most part it was simply an opportunity to learn and try something new. I say ‘new’, but I realised a little way into the weeks of sessions that it was in fact one of my favourite types of fiction to read. Not new! Who knew?

Speaking of (cheesy TV host voice), scroll on to see something I wrote in one those sessions!

— we’d be given little creative exercises with structures and specifications to try and play with, between the text discussions and workshopping business, but never had to read anything out. The brief for this one was: ‘A description of a character with blanks the reader can fill in themselves — maybe decide what info you’ll always give, and what you’ll always leave up to readers)’;

He’ll always catch everyone’s eye when he enters a room, on account of him being so _____. It’s undeniable and immediately becomes an invisible elephant nobody dares acknowledge or touch. He dresses much like a _____ would, which makes sense in a way — although while his eyes are piercing, bright, and a _____ kind of hue, they’re not what you’d expect necessarily from everything you’ve already taken in about his appearance. His hair, meanwhile, is just _____. Which is neither here nor there.

*

Another brief was, ‘write your own two-sentence story with a descriptive title (without which the piece would lose something significant)’;

‘What If Kombucha is a Divine Scam?’ by Grace Beal.

‘My gut needs this,’ you’ll say.
I don’t, the gut replies, but you never listen.

*

What do you think? You don’t have to tell me. As you should know by now, I just appreciate you reading.