What drives me?

I was reading one of my favorite blogs http://dialmforminky.com, and Stephanie was discussing what drives her http://dialmforminky.com/2011/10/what-fuels-me-besides-starbucks-you-mean/ I have been giving this topic quite a lot of thought myself lately and I haven’t really been able to quantify it. So I am attempting to do what I always do when I am trying to figure something out -write and/or talk about it until it makes sense in my head. So this post is pretty much stream of consciousness, lunch break therapy. Please feel free it skip it if you are looking for well organized and written prose. But then again, if that is what you are looking for, this is probably not the blog for you anyway.

Today I am feeling a bit lost and I realize I have lost sight of the forest through the trees of me. Too often I identify myself with the things I do, the metaphorical trees I plant. But it is all too easy to forget I am bigger than any one of these things. At various points in my life, I have been driven by different desires. Puffing up my already over inflated ego was certainly a long running theme. The ego thing still rears its ugly (but admittedly effective) head. And maybe that is healthy to a degree, in a take pride in your work kind of way. Today it is my kids more than anything else, that drive me. But I spend more time parenting employees than I do my own kids. Ultimately though, I know the hours and work I put in are for my family. My kids are my world, but I am also more than a parent. I have outside hopes and dreams, wants and desires. Like Stephanie, I have a need for creative expression. A need that sadly is rarely satisfied. My creative writing, with the exception of sporadic blog posts, has fallen away. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a poem or story.

I think for me, what drives me in large part is tied to how I define myself. I define myself as a parent first and foremost. I always knew I wanted kids, but I never knew how much it would change me. It became my center, but still not all of me. I have also always defined myself as an athlete and runner. For many years I wasn’t, but it never stopped me from thinking of myself in those terms. It was the realization that myself image was out of whack with my reality, that has pushed me to run again and consistently. I have been using Facebook and an iPhone app to help drive that change. I track all of my runs with Runmeter. Its Facebook integration helps me keep it real, so to speak. I’ve gotten to a respectable distance, now I just have to work on my speed. I want to think of myself as a runner, so by posting my running statistics in a mostly public fashion, I force myself to stick to it. Now there are plenty of other reasons I run. It is time to think, it feels great, reduces my occurrences of migraines, and it is doing wonders for my fitness. But the thing that drives me to run, is the desire for an internal and consistent self image. The goal being that eventually I will run regularly, not just because I want to think of myself as a runner, but because I truly am. I am starting to feel out of sorts when I don’t run, so hopefully I am moving in that direction.

I have thought of (and tried) ways I could do something similar with writing but I realized today, I no longer define myself as a writer. It seems odd to say out loud. I went a lot longer without running than I ever did without writing. But there it is. If I never publish “that novel”, I will be OK with that. Heck if I never write another short story or poem again, I would be OK with that as well. But if I no longer define myself as a writer, how can I address the desire for creative expression? I can’t paint or draw a straight line. I’m not much of a photographer. Yes, I could still write, and maybe someday I will take it up again, but in the mean time I have lost a large part of how I define myself in regards to creativity. But I need to remember, creativity goes beyond any single creative hobby or actions. I am creative in the ways I solve problems at work, parent my children, fix things around the house. But is that enough… I don’t know. There is something missing in regards to a creative outlet, and outside the context of writing, I’m not sure I know how to find it.