Creativity is my anti-drug.

It amazes me how much I psychoanalyze myself. Basically every person I meet who finds out I'm being trained as a therapist asks me if I'm psychoanalyzing them. I usually put on my best Freud impression and ask them, "So... how does that make you feel?" just to make them nervous. But in reality, I rarely psychoanalyze someone beyond what anybody would do naturally without their permission. I mean, I hate it when my professors start psychoanalyzing me and trying to give me therapy during a meeting or casual chat. I assume most other people would prefer I not do the same to them. Instead, I focus on myself and why I act/think/feel the way I do. I overanalyze, hypothesize, and soliloquize usually to the point of driving myself crazy. While there are hundreds and thousands of things I have not, and probably will not, figure out, I have come to some pretty solid conclusions about some dimensions of who I am and why I am that way.

For instance:
I thrive on creativity. If my opportunity to be creative is stifled in any way, I wither away into something resembling a zombie with a bad cold. Seriously. I lose motivation, energy, and immunity from infectious diseases. The year I stopped dancing was also the year I ended up with about 4 varieties of sinus infections and colds. It took 4 attempts at heavy antibiotics before I was back to normal. I blame this on the loss of a creative outlet.

So, all this to say that I have found I MUST always have a creative outlet to keep me happy and healthy. Within the past few years, my creative outlet of choice has been a mixture of dance, theatre, and music. But recently, all of my outlets have been smushed, so to speak. This summer proved my body is too old and crippled to endure much dancing; grad school has taken away anytime I might have been able to devote to theatre; and piano has taken a backseat to all of my other responsibilities. So, sadly, I have recently found myself outletless. And fighting off the early (yet still noncontagious, nonthreatening) symptoms of a cold.

However, these past few days have proved to be a silver lining on the dark cloud of my creativity-starved existence. Tonight, a friend and I will be checking out the local choral guild. I haven't been in a choir in probably 5 years. I haven't sung formally since summer. Actually, I haven't sung classically in probably 2 years... Wow.

Anyway, I have also begun attending more classical music recitals and concerts, like I used to. I hadn't realized how much I missed not only performing, but also being in the audience. There's something so rejuvenating and, well, therapeutic about a well-played sonata.

And... a few days ago, I learned how to play the trumpet (Task 44). As a French horn player, I had the basic skills already in my back pocket, but was surprised at how different the two instruments really are. A musician/grad student friend of mine offered to teach me how to play and, starved of creative outlets, I of course agreed. I'm no Maynard Ferguson, but now I can fairly confidently play elementary etudes and duets. I also was reminded that there is a trumpet back home, so maybe I'll keep it up. Maybe this will be a new outlet to add to my inventory.