Developing Wings: My Ah Ha Moment

The other day, I was aimlessly googling inspirational quotes  (because--what else am I supposed to do with my free time?) and I came upon a quote that has stayed fresh in my mind ever since:

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down." - Kurt Vonnegut (author of Slaughterhouse-five)

Upon reading this quote, I was instantly struck with the painful realization that I'm not jumping off any hypothetical cliffs in my life, and I'm certainly not developing my methephorical wings.

My life, as hard as it is to admit, has become boring, normal--adult! (Gasp!)

When I was a little girl, my mom would introduce me by saying, "This is my daughter, Mallory. She's going to be an author someday!" I was such a creative child. In the second grade, I wrote a short story about a married couple named Stacy and Stew going through a nasty divorce   ( I'll credit that plot line to countless hours spent hiding behind the couch to watch 90210 and Melrose Place after bedtime).  In the sixth grade, I wrote my first "novel" about the adventures of a traveling musical family. In college, I spent my free time painting with oils and acrylics and scrap booking any and every picture I took.

And then something happened....I graduated college and realized that I was 30,000 in debt and unemployed. So I moved back home, got a job and have been grinding the stone ever since.

I took an assessment test in college and was the only member of my Business  Management class to get "artist" as their ideal career. So what did I do? I got into human resources....

Now I spend my days watching co-workers squirm at the sight of me, hiring, firing and doing other dirty work that human resources professionals love so much (that was sarcasm).

Recently, I pulled out my oil paints and a dusty canvas that had been sitting in the back of my closet, and sat down for what i thought would be a theraputic painting session.

Before, it flowed naturally. I didn't have to try to paint anything--it just happened. This time, however, I was two hours in, and all I had was a greenish/yellowish blob. The painters block was so foreign to me that I thought surely something was wrong with the paints. They must have gone bad. They must have run together when I wasn't looking. There was a Picasso in there somewhere, buried behind all the goop....

Truth was: I'd  lost it. Something so meaningful and easy to the teenage version of me was gone. And that's when I decided to make more of a conscious effort to get the creative part of me back.

I will paint! I will write! I will be creative--dammit! Even if it kills me! (Okay, maybe that's a little extreme. You won't find me jumping of any literal cliffs anytime soon...or ever).

But what you will see is one girl desperately seeking to grow a pair of her own wings. Hopefully my journey will inspire other desperate workaholics like me to follow suit!

Stay tuned for my first creative DIY project :)