Creativity Part I
Yesterday while riding the 1 train from 18th Street to my transfer at 42nd, I had an idea for a project. It was a momentary stroke of genius that would surely lead to greatness if carried out. This idea was succeeded by a thought. “You don’t need any more projects. You need to follow through with the projects you have.” The thought was right. I am the illegitimate parent of too many project ideas to count. These projects, scattered across the universe, denied the nurture and attention they require, have little chance of survival. Maybe I could track them down and gather them together. I could put them in a repository. A graveyard. At least they’d be accounted for. And I would be their groundskeeper/webmaster, maintaining Amy’s Eternal Resting Place of Abandoned Projects and adding to it periodically.
But…they are not dead yet. Each has been brought to the same emergency ward, and each is crying out to me. I am their physician, capable of restoring their lives with proper care and attention. With my assistance, they could recover, thrive, and reach their potential. But there are so many of them. And their desperate cries pain me. I who created them am responsible for the consequences of their neglect, and yet I don’t know where to start, whom to save. I am overwhelmed by the task and, poor physician that I am, seek instead to be distracted. I pursue other pleasures, parent other projects, in part to forget my debt to those already born. Having the ability and obligation to do good, I passively elect to nothing. How can I live with myself? No more projects. I am too careless to be trusted with such precious and vulnerable creatures.
