Introvert=Invisible(?)

All my life I’ve been shy, or for those that prefer the politically correct term “introverted”. I know it’s hard to believe, but from my perspective, it’s not a bad thing. I’m not hold up in my home office, wearing pajamas, banging away at a computer. All right maybe I am, but I’m not dysfunctional. I do shower and change before my husband comes home.

To set the record straight, being an introvert is not some character flaw that needs to be overcome. Actually I think it makes me uniquely qualified to work from home and have my own business. I listen to people, ask questions, and communicate when I have something to contribute.

Recently a client asked me, if I’d ever won any awards. Awards? An introvert winning awards? That would mean I would have had to submit my work for consideration. I could never do that. Bring attention to myself? Ekkkk! That’s not to say I don’t appreciate recognition for a job well done, but when finished, I’m ready to move on to my next project and looking back seems all rather…
…unproductive.

Let’s face it I’m not a flashy, or flamboyant person. I’m solid, dependable, and I get the job done. I sound like a Ford F150 pick up truck. I really should go out and toot my horn, make myself visible, but how do I do that being an introvert? It’s seems like a contradiction. Is invisibility the result of being an introvert? Do I even want to be visible? I know I want my business to be visible, and my business is me. Right?

Hell, this is the trouble with circular reasoning, it keeps going around in circles.

How Deep Is the Well?

I belong to a few LinkedIn Groups directly related to design and/or creativity. These groups have lively discussions on the direction of design, tools, portfolios, and fair compensation for work. Members of these groups run the gambit from college students to seasoned professions, like myself. When I have something substantive to contribute I weigh in but generally I monitor the contributions.

This week a creative person from Florida posted the following question, which got me thinking about my own creativity.

Creative Question! If you were no longer able to use the medium that you are now working in, how else would you express your creativity?

I have identified myself as a creative person for most of my life. Actually, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t creative. (Painting, drawing, sewing, crafts, etc.…)

Growing up people always told me creativity is a gift. I don’t know about that. I never thought I had it a gift. I’m just your average person. Maybe I just didn’t value creativity because I didn’t know any other way. If it’s a gift my daughter has been blessed with it. If it’s not a gift I exposed and ultimately infected her with the same disease when she was young.

Both of our creative lives have not been all about medium but more about cultivating the creative mind and soul.  Granted one can be more adept in one medium than another but it’s the creative mind/soul that will not be squelched and will find a way to express it’s self.

When my daughter was young she asked me where my ideas came from and how I kept coming up with new ideas. I’d not been asked that before and didn’t know how to explain something unexplainable? The best I could come with was a descriptive a metaphor.

My creativity is a deep well and when I need inspiration I reach into that well with my bucket and draw out ideas. Sometimes the well bubbles and churns with ideas and others I scrape the bottom, but I’ve always been able to pull out something.

Silly metaphor, maybe but it’s the best way I’ve found to describe how it works for me. It might explain why, when a client asks for a design I’m generally able to give them several more concepts than they aniticipated.

Do I worry about “the well” going dry? Sometimes, but I’ve learned to take care of my “well”. I don’t poison it with emotional garbage.  I’ve learned to separate my professional/commercial art from my personal art and the two seldom meet.

I’ve been lucky and have made a decent living using my creative mind and over the years the mediums have changed/evolved. Bottom line, medium is merely a vehicle for creativity to escape and if you protect your “well” the medium will be of little consequence.