Challenged Creativity 10/12/09

If you limit you actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.

Lewis Carroll
**************
You're welcome in here.
_______________________
Are they friends or foes? It's hard to tell sometimes.

I know a woman who is a former theatre colleague of mine. She has a very positive attitude and approach to her life and work. I like to say about her that if she doesn't have a smile on her face, her face hurts. And yet I, and anyone who knows her well, would be quick to comfort her if she was weeping, stand by her and listen if she was raging or defend her if she was under attack. I worked with her for many years. We still keep in touch.

Some wise one once said that an artist isn't ahead of his time, the rest of the world is behind theirs. I worked for a few years at a major radio station in the city. It fell on my shift to do most of the news programs during the morning hours. There was a traditional format for doing the news programs that was wasteful and redundant. So I changed it, streamlined the broadcast, made it more efficient and easier to do. Then the phone calls and angry letters started coming in. People wanted to hear their news done in the old fashioned way, not because it was better but because that's what they were used to. Someone got to the owner of the station and I was told to restore the old way. I left the job and moved on. A few years later I was listening to that station one day and, sure enough, they are now doing the news the way I had designed it. I wonder who's great idea it was to do that? No I don't, I've moved on.

How many so-called friends can you remember who loved you, thought you were great and inspiring as long as you were a happy-go-lucky chap, without a care, but who at the first sign of a wrinkle in your character, a moment of negativity, a dark day of gloom and sorrow, up and disappeared or turned into foes. It has happened and keeps happening. It's one of the tragedies of life. Someone turns his back on you because you're not perfect.

If you are a public person, take it from me, they will damn you if you are not the person they want you to be. I have a large file of fan mail and reviews I've received over the years, I saved the sunshine and threw out the muck.

Sometimes I astonish myself at what I get done during the day. For someone for whom it is painful to stand or walk, whose eyesight is too poor to read for more than 15 minutes, living in a town where nothing is convenient and with an idiosyncratic computer, I manage to make a lot of things happen around here. And yet I always feel as if I haven't done enough.

I don't know much, which is why I keep trying to learn more. But this I know, no matter how much praise, appreciation and love they may profess, if they abandon you at the first sign of trouble, let 'em go. Love 'em and leave 'em.

Thank you for reading this.

DB - The Vagabond
*******************
May you take time to enjoy the October experience.
=============================