To think that really boring people see highly creative people as children?

[Heroine]

I AM JUST SAYING..

I had a weird thing happen, I am quite creative and like decorative stuff and cool quirky things and someone who I thought was on the same wavelength gave me a real dressing down when I showed her some cool japanese quirky notebooks I bought - with that sort of stylised fluffy, hearty, pop=art style, she sais the thought it was childish and unprofessional. (!). i thought it was just fun..

It made me think that all the people who make the rules about what is 'professional' are really just all the really dull tedious unimaginative types and that is why they think creativity is likely to diminish performance - because they can't handle it and it freaks their boring little heads out.

(I know this might seem to conflict with my 'women who run fluffy novelty businesses' thread, but I'm just saying (and not explaining well) that the dull people seem to never be interested in anything, and seem to make the rules, and the people who went wild and got into interestingb things in their teens and 20s but had to droip them because the dull run the world, are seen by the dull people as 'only having childish ideas'.
It seems a bit sad - does anyone see what I mean?? It seems to be getting worse as women have more serious jobs - I get it but as I'm a bit 'consultant-ish' I can ride above it, but it seems that somewhere there is a book that says you can't be clever or get things done or reliable unless you think and dress in a dull boring way.. and that makes no sense to me..

sorry for going on, but I think there somethin in my uncomfortableness at being thought of as childish when I think of myself as an adult who has some sense of humour and creativity.

Am I being unreasonable??

she writes fiction, meantosay

ormiron I don't know anyone who is entirely unmathematical. We all do our budgets and check our change.

But that doens't make us mathematical types does it?

Creative and analytical are not opposites.

I am now going upstairs to create a made bed and then coming back down to see if my little creative genius has managed to create a turd in the potty.

I like the word identifyning. It's analytical and creative.

Sakura -yes there ARE non creative types - ME.

I did some drawing with ds (then aged 3) and my dfather thought it was ds's and judged it not bad for a three year old. It was meeeee.

But I'm very musical - that was my thing - but I still think I'm a non-creative type. But hasn't done me any mental harm at all.

I often find my creative friends (as much as I love them) very uncreative in their lives and get very much stuck in a rut as selling a novel/painting/NOT WORKING IN AN OFFICE - is their life goal - and it's a very hard life goal to achieve imo.

I'm not an artist in anyway at all - and I haven't touched music for 20 years (and I did teach an intrument at one point) - very sad (some might say) but I'm doing OK for it.

thecoalition no they are not.

But I do find that most peronality types veer towards one or the other.

Creativity requires an instinctual leap at some point. Right brain versus left brain activity if you see what I mean.

"I think the difference is, there is little cultural cachet in identifyning as analytical, whereas there is perceived cachet in being creative."

Not in my world.

Anyone on the normal spectrum of human behavior would need both those quantities.

But sciency types are very creative Litchic.
Engineers are creative.......but they don't do fluffy note books!

Isn't that why Einstein failed maths all the way up to his higher degree? I guess the instinct was in somehow knowing he could create, eventually, with all the analytical stuff he was amassing, that he found difficult.

Actually, it often makes me laugh if I read an interview with an actress and they say 'I couldn't work in an ordinary 9-5 job. Yes you could love if the mortgage and food bills depended on it. Lots of creative types sitting in building societies and civil service offices.

Yes, actually you are right.

But a very different sort of creativity, I think.

But then I think most proper scientists are probably outliers too.

"But that doens't make us mathematical types does it?"

So what. I think there is no huge chasm between the 2. My dad was a nuclear engineer and a mathematician. He is also a poet and writer and a passionate reader of everything. If you thick scientists are only analytical and not creative, you only have to look at quantum theory to see that is untrue - leaps of faith are needed in all areas of thought. Music is mathematics too - uncreative?

I see the point had been made

It's only since renaissance times we've separated the two types of "thinking"/creating. Previously it was seen as normal to do both.

I suppose I am using the word creative, when actually I mean artistic.

Creative can indeed encompass differing sorts of new thinking. From physics, to engineering, to music.

Artistic, I guess, is more narrow.

Thread cross.

I disagree though - aside from the left and right brain thing being nonsense from a neurological viewpoint - I think we underestimate the amount of creativity that is needed to just get through everyday life. Negotiating social situations, even following dramas requires us to constantly create models of what other people are thinking/feeling etc.

Equally we don't achnowledge how analytical we are over the same kinds of things, and don't recognise that something like choosing a present for someone requires an enormous amount of both creativity and analysis.

What has happened is that we have labeled some areas of activity as 'creative' or 'analytical' when they all involve both.

A non-creative mathemeician and an artist who couldn't analyse their own endeavour would be equally crippled.

And writing itself is a combination of the two - the "creating" part and then the editing part. I think that's why there are so many unfinished novels sitting in drawers - maybe partly because of this feeling that the two kinds of skill are necessarily separate.

Double thread cross.

Yes, 'Creative' in this sense has been used to mean 'Artistic' and is really just a label for a set of behaviours and signifiers that people can use.

I wonder whether creative is something you should wait for others to judge you as?

Like saying 'i'm such a funny person.' well no, others will be the judge of that.

And even when you've won the Perrier award at Edinburgh saying your hilarious and being snotty about drones would make you look twattish.

melezka absolutely yes.

When I write, it's such an easy thing to do for me. Even when I'm not writing, I'm making things up in my head. I can't turn it off - which is often a pain in the arse actually.

But the editing is haaaaarrrrrd. I make myself do it. But I am not naturally good at it.

morde yes, yes, yes .

I'm always astonished at people who just know they are good at something.

I often gte told that someone is a really good writer and I think, bloody hell, I've had tons of books published and I'm still not convinced.

If you saw me you'd think I was very conventional and boring. I wear muted colours and garments that render me nigh on invisible. I have never dyed my hair, pierced anything or had any tattoos. I do any handwriting on scraps of paper or a plain lined notepad.
I am very creative in that I love writing stories and poems. I also spend large parts of every day fantasising about living in the 18th century, or the middle ages. I have vivid images of myself fighting in some long-ago battle in a muddy field for example.
I just have never needed or wanted to buy brightly coloured stationery or pens and if people want to think I am dull because of that, then that is entirely up to them.