Time Flies

I've noticed that the month of May has flown by quickly. No television was my goal. We watched a few movies - about one every other week. Since I've dropped TV, I picked up drawing, photography, photoshopping, flickr networking, more blogging and getting closer to my wife and kids.

Tonight I go to a pizza place that can best be described as something like Dave and Busters, but more family oriented. I hope to have fun with photography there and meet a couple of new people. With more activity in life, it feels more like an adventure. Other than the occasional movie, I'm ready to give up the screen altogether.

By the way, the movies watched were: The last few shorts from the Ray Bradbury Theater, Planet of the Apes (with Charlton Heston) and Les Miserables with Liam Neeson. Ray Bradbury Theater was a real disappointment. I remember him being more creative instead of taking ideas from other writers and putting mild twists on them. Planet of the Apes was

Fading Melody

Years ago, half my life away, I wrote poetry and music regularly. They even won contests. Even though the poetry itself is backed up on some dusty floppy disk, the creative swarms are lost along with most of the colorful friends I had at the time. One activity I was engrossed in, and what helped during uncreative times, was poetry or lyric interpretation. I would go deep into some poem that already had enough levels of complexity that English teachers feared to tread into them because they could alone spawn half a semester of banter and commentary.

For example, T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men", which tends to address the journey of the soul from a newly acquired state of death to its completeness. There are allusions to Dante, Conrad, Morris and Kipling tied together to show political angst supposedly towards the Treaty of Versailles. I'd tend to think, as others do in this trying time, that most politicians are hollow, stuffed and already dead. Didn't Dante dedicate a special canto in hell just for them?

Other poetry was much easier to cypher, like Edna St. Vincent Millay's "A Few Figs From Thistles" which is primarily about blazing through life, though you'll make regrettable mistakes along the way ... and tends to go into typical relationship taboos such as adultery, cheating, lust and bondage.

Rush, Sixpence None the Richer, Tori Amos and Sarah McLauchlin were bands that I frequented concerts to, as news of them came to me, in the Austin area and had all albums available and ready to be brooded upon. The styles of the last two particularly influenced my style of music, though some strong religious differences and some blatant blasphemous songs from Tori Amos sent me on a decade long boycott.

For some time, music was what I breathed, ate, drank, slept. I surrounded myself with music every moment of the day when it made sense. But over the course of the past ten years that craving became more of an emptiness. Music lost most of its meaning and lyrics were chaff in the wind. Some of that is because of the gross amount of bad music that started coming out. But it had more to do with becoming more "responsible". Though the probability of most of these risks are the same, the consequences are much higher.

But what was interesting when reflecting over how the apathy towards music increased was noticing that, as one "civilizing" or "taming" event came after another, my spirit was eventually broken. My passion for much of anything was chopped at - hacked away - by worldly forces and I felt myself become just another work drone. I remember one employer laughing at me after one of those experiences and literally saying: "So you can be broken!"

Ugh!
Yes - but by breaking people you lose ... the creativity, the passion, the responsibility, the fearless risk taking, the adventurous spirit ... you kill it ... it dies like a fading melody into the grave of white-noise that was so easily attainable to begin with.

These are all necessary for art, beauty, entrepreneurship, adventuring, exploring - in short, it's required to really live out life. I have never met a suicidal person who was passionate about life and enjoying it. I have known one or two who were passionate but constantly getting brow-beaten by the world until they had nothing left to live for.

The challenge is to remember these lessons when my seven year old gets permanent paint on my jacket, or looks up longingly for approval on some messily crafted crayon drawing, or her eyes light up eagerly to pick up an expensive clarinet though she hasn't learned how to play a note. Eventually, and directly from my reactions, she'll either learn to love messes like Pollock and Picasso, or dream of it while she passively files papers. She'll either color the grey world like Julian Beever, or she'll quietly beat the pavements with the masses. She'll croon the world with new music like Goodman, or puff out sad sighs and conform. I don't want her to end up like me - at least not like the me that exists today.

Just like how trees that are chopped to the ground can grow back, that root of inspiration is still buried deep in my soul somewhere. It's a mess getting through the scar tissue and it's a fighting struggle to be enough of a conformist to support my wife and four kids, yet have enough creativity to show them that the world God made for us has more beauty in it than the government would have us believe.

This job "fulfilling in creative way"

Not too long ago I spoke with someone I work for. During which it was basically said that I wasn't creative, that I didn't like change and that my strength rested in creating analytical algorithms. Two weeks later I was repositioned in the company. The new position essentially removes analytical algorithm development from the list. The change is because, as it was explained, it would bring the company more money.

It was evident that me being a (tongue-in-cheek) wuss had its hand in the decision more than money alone. I've always been a push-over, a wuss, an easy bite. I like flowers and cooking and topiaries. I hate boxing and football and burly guys who generally used me for practicing their punches and tackles.

Now that my wussiness had come out of the closet, I had to stare at my navel. After some serious hairy-wus navel staring, I've come to the conclusion that some wrong assumptions were made. I had to look at the evidence, though, to convince myself of this.

"What is creativity?", I had to ask. I would define it as a strong imaginative involvement in the design. Skill would be the ability to execute that design. Van Gogh as a grown painter was both creative and skilled. A three year old Van Gogh with a box of crayons would only be creative - not skilled, though Jackson Pollock might disagree. Hand a fourteen year old Van Gogh a pencil and add the careful instruction of Huysmans and that begins to change.

So where did I show creativity and execute it skillfully?

1. 1992 Founded and moderated the first wan-based network poetry conference for bitnet, a national university network before their use of the internet.


2. 1993 Won position in Texas State University's annual creative writing competition, "personna".


3. 1994 Constructed the university's first public web server based off of CERN's HTTP but rewritten to allow extend server side script interpretation, advanced logging and basic load balancing.


4. 1994 Began construction of one of the first world wide web's romance themed sites. There were only a few thousand sites on the internet at the time. This site, "Romantic Gestures" became internationally renown; articles about it were published in Germany, Sweden, the UK and Japan. It also won accolades in the United States, including one from Netscape for most innovative use of technology.


5. 1995 Wrote one of the worlds first web-based graphical web-usage applications. It would generate its own charts rather than spit out the web log file. This application was purchased with my employment to Promus.


6. 1996 Worked with a highly intelligent crew at Promus Hotels to create the world's first real-time online reservation service of anything. At this time, all reservations from competitors were nothing more than glorified emails to a reservation agent. We allowed direct access to the database and provided features that weren't even available to agents at the time, such as alternate availability in close proximity locations when your initial parameters couldn't be fulfilled.


7. 1996 Developed one of the world's first virtual reality hotel room previews. This preview wasn't designed for people making reservations, but rather for potential franchise buyers. The technology is, however, still similar but extended beyond QuickTime VR. It incorporated Director and VRML in a stand-alone application wrapper.


8. 1997 Worked with Netscape and FedEx to build the world premier of push-pull technology. Here we used a product called Marimba, which was a RAD environment for creating Java applets. I had direct involvement with field testing the Internet Foundation Classes, that pre-cursored Swing.


9. 1998 Went freelance. Won Pixelpalooza honorable mention. Designed and developed intranet solutions for Omnipoint.


10. 1999 Began working as a consultant employee. During this time many hats including lead application design, software engineering, software development, testing and deployment, IT infrastructure development, management and maintenance. Additionally, my creative talents were called to create the company's website, providing its first high-profile image on the web.


11. 1999 Began other cool super secret fuzzy logic projects that used the following 529 skills: [insert 2 pages of semantic keyword expressions here to impress my friends and make them cower in Dilbert-like inadequacy at my foreboding ability to throw out acronyms - mua hah hah haaaaa].

That's just the business aspect - over the years up until two years ago I used to be engaged in: writing children's music, leading worship in my church's children's ministry, photoshopping contests, graphic development, icon contests, flash development, multimedia kiosk design and development, even proof-checking web design books. These abilities require a combination of analytical and creative skills.

What changed two years ago? I'm not sure. I started feeling inadequate and lost my muse. The music stopped. I left the ministry and became dormant. The energy and will to express creativity just wasn't there. I withheld many of my opinions. Rather than seeing conflict as a door for challenges and an opportunity to view different viewpoints, I began to experience conflict as ... just wearisome conflict that could cost me my job. Not practicing my instruments made me rusty, which made me feel more inadequate and discouraged.

In all reality, the whole world is not pitted against me, but I allowed myself to only see points where it was.

The past year, however, something started brewing. I began posting photos up on flickr. A photo got published in DC Guide. Other photos ranked high on the interestingness pages. I am nowhere near the high level of talent posted on flickr... but I'm a part of it. Now I'm exploring venues to express my creativity again.

There is, however, one assumption that is deserved. That is, if my employer inversely equates change with stability then he's right. I like stability... something or someone I can depend on and rely on. On the flip-side, I appreciate having the reputation of being someone others could rely upon even in pressing matters and undesirable tasks. Loyalty is possibly more important to me than it is in the mob. When I realize that I let anyone down, I take it hard ... really hard ... then I try hard to rebuild that reputation.

But I just have this drive to be creative. What to do? I have satisfaction in knowing three things.

First, it's an incredible company even with my position, which by definition forces career growth to pass me by. The people in it are generally committed and highly intelligent. Besides, there are unspoken benefits to my position. It's like having the ability to be a doctor, but choosing to be a nurse because it has different rewards.

Second, God has me where He wants me. I can't argue with that. In fact, I have to remind myself that I ultimately work for God, not a company. He's not pleased when I give anything less than my best - so I give my best at the workplace. I'm working on changing myself to also give just as much to my household. It's a tough order to fill, and I won't be perfect, but by trying my best there's that satisfaction.

Finally, because it's considered that the creativity I have doesn't offer the company value, there are fewer business demands on my time. This could be a very good thing. It allows me to cut back my hours to a more regular 45 hour weeks, take my vacation time and spend this (extra) time with my family and going back to grass roots - creating what I love: writing music, designing websites, building ideas.

My dad invented incredible equipment that revolutionized the aviation industry. My grandfather built incredible rides and amusements in Disneyland. My mom is an accomplished painter, my grandmother a philanthropist. Even my father-in-law has impressive credentials. I don't intend on watering down the talented achievements that flower our family tree with an apathetic complacency.

Creativity is not merely self expression - it enhances and defines our culture and philosophies. It speaks spiritually and is attentive to those who receive it. It is the evidence of liberty.

Creativity encompasses and explores its boundaries then expands them like puffing into an inflatable latex glove. It brightens our lives with humor and insight, giving it all double meaning. It defines who we are, yet at the same time is little more than a mirror of the definition we give ourselves.