I left my very well paying, fly me all over and keep me at plush hotels, corporate job to become an artist. Really. And that’s exactly what I told my six bosses and everyone else that asked. I don’t think they quite believed me. Well, not a first.

Then as my last day approached, people started coming up to me with these tentative but strangely admiring looks, and they would eventually reveal to me their own creative proclivities. One woman in quality control revealed that on occasion she wrote short stories, the IT manager manager used to write poetry, one of the vice-presidents revealed he’d bought his last home with space for a furniture making studio he had yet to set up, and even the multi-media guy, who had the most creative job in the place, brought around sketches of these 3-D moving wooden scenes and toys that ran by wooden gears he used to make. Used to. There was a lot of  ‘used to’ and ‘I would like to someday’ comments.

These revelations confirmed for me one of the reasons for my leaving a regular job. The competition and all consuming drive that is perpetuated in large companies stiffles and leaves no room, energy, or time for personal creative expression. I was feeling it myself. With a degree in both fine art and creative writing, it was intolerable to spend weeks, sometimes months without writing even a poem or sculpting a pendant. I can’t not create. But I don’t think I am unique there. Everyone has something inside them they need to get out and put into a tangible form, even if they rarely share it. Food, shelter, companionship and creativity. I believe those are the bare necessities we need to feel whole and to live.

I have never known an wholly  unhappy creative person who was working on their craft. Tortured, yes. Angry yes. But desperately unhappy and frustrated by their life? Only when they couldn’t work.

Perhaps I’m wrong but I have a feeling that if every child in school was required to take a creative class each semester and every person on earth was expected to spend at least a few hours every week creating something new to share with the world, we’d have a much happier, more content world. Yeah, I know. Idealistic nonesense that is.  But I believe it to be true and will live by it. Create, write, sing, dance, sculpt, paint, cook, garden, craft … just do something good for your soul every week if not every day. And see if it doesn’t make a difference.