Recently I was at a new acquaintance’s art gallery show and we found some time to catch up. Well, ok, first I grilled him on his creative process behind a particular painting. Really an odd way to open a discussion now that I think of it – when I’m processing an image or what have you (and I ‘m not saying the results are grand) the changes I make lead the image to look or feel… right(?) or I continue to work on it until it does. Or I give up and maybe come back to it later. It’s not any kind of logical path thing I can spell out along the way and often I can’t even remember all of what I did or undid to get there. I dunno why I thought it would any different for a painter so was completely surprised by the lack of a cogent response. I mean, he’s been painting for a really long time, surely he has some by the numbers process… well, no!

In the course of our discussion he’d asked how I was doing and I said, I’d met someone, blah, blah, blah, my photo output had slowed way down (note: It occurrs to me now that I may have “shot out” my environment and really need new vistas). Then he asked what I did when I was not doing photography, and I said, well, I write(!)… but not much at the moment.

Despite work and having a really awesome new person in my life – add to that my duties as a dad – I still do have some time to create. Something. Anything. But I haven’t been.

But that’s not what I said to Max, I’d given him a cloud of things, good things, that were going on with me and some vagaries about creativity and from that he plucked out, oh, so you’re in love. And I said…
Well, yeah.

It’s pretty interesting how he connected those dots. Maybe it’s a cliché, I dunno. Now I’m wondering if my creativity really is inversely proportional to my happiness. I’ve been cruising along for the last several months, fairly stress free, enjoying things as they come – yet watchful and cautious because life can change up on you in a heartbeat or less – and vegetating creatively. I’ve frequently had topics I could blog about pop in my head only to forget them later. The spark fizzles, I s’pose or I can’t maintain my own interest in the subject, or something else happens that holds my interest.

… oh, so you’re in love. And I said…
Well, yeah.

In terms of my current relationship, it’s definitely not something I hide, quite the opposite, but this slump predates that…
… It hit me that I may be closer than I’ve ever been to being perfectly happy with myself and living a fairly drama free life – that’s really something, ain’t it? If the trade for less thrash is having the creative itch die down… well I’m pretty sure I can learn to live with it. For a short time. Until it pisses me off. 😉