The truth we learned from Jeff and Julie Crabtree, was something we already knew, but not sure we believed it: a creative mind is valuable. There have been many times in our lives where we wished that we were wired in a more practical, linear way. That’s not us. We both have a creative mind, and regardless of how brilliant or not our creativity may be, it is valuable, because the creative ones are the ones who envision and materialize the future.
The creative mind can be messy. The main two challenges for us are these: First, we have trained ourselves to edit and improve our ideas, and therefore we have developed a critical reflex which can easily spill into areas of our life beyond the creative process. We both get paid to be critical! Second, our life can quickly become overwhelmingly complex, because we see things for what they can be, rather than what they are: which is often just another project and there are only 24 hours in each day. We get exhausted because we try to take on too much. It’s when we get tired that we tend to “spiral” and lose focus. Jeff and Julie call it high tide and low tide. It’s tricky for us because we are both creative and we tend to drag each other into our low tide, but, even over the last year since the conference, we are getting better at recognizing where the other person is at and we recover much more quickly. Our marriage is what usually suffers first, but Jeff and Julie’s words of wisdom encourage us to value each other as we ride the emotional roller-coaster that can be the creative process.
The creative mind is such a rich thing to possess. Even though it comes with its difficulties, the world needs ‘cartographers of the soul’ as Jeff put it. And if we are able to walk in a parallel, peaceful path tit can be done. Not that we have mastered this by any means, but we do know that it can be done, and knowing is half the battle.