11 - Being Creative

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I can point to you the spot where I’ve hit my head so many times…yep, that’s right, THE spot.  Four out of five potential concussions have been the result of me hitting my head in the exact same spot.  What are the odds?

THE spot is on my left side, just adjacent to and overlapping my stylish side-part.  I think one of my hair stylists once told me they could tell there had been some trauma there, but otherwise there’s no visible identifying landmark.  My CT scan and MRIs both show nothing there either (“unremarkable” as the reports say). But for me, that spot can become an epicentre of pain and I have this sort of 6th sense that makes me anxiously protect the area when any elbow, open cupboard or apples on a tree are passing overhead…

I have made the joke that since the injury happened on the left side of my head, that my left brain functions must be impaired…it’s a great excuse for sucking at math, lol.  If this were true (which I have no proof for…well, except for the part about me sucking at math, but that really has nothing to do with the injury…) then maybe my right brain has had to overcompensate.  Typically, we’ve associated left brain with empirical functions and the right brain with art and creativity.  Well, if I’m going to use the injury as an excuse to suck at math, I might as well use it as an excuse to get my creative on.

Truthfully, I’ve always been a creative person, just not super talented in any art form (a look at my childhood crafted Christmas ornaments can show you that I must have had a great imagination, but a subpar skill set for colour, pattern and symmetry…).  As a kid when we’d get together with family, my cousins and I would annoy the adults, demanding they watched our most recent theatre production assembled that night.  On my own time, I would paint random objects in my room (because my car-shaped pencil holder wasn’t interesting enough).  As a pre-teen, I wrote my own script for the X-Files (I bet you Chris Carter would have loved it).  As a teenager, my best friend and I wrote parodies to pop songs and filmed music videos (may they be lost and never found) and I drew cartoon birthday cards for my high school gal pals (ok, legit, those were pretty sweet).  Yep, growing up I may never have had opportunities for dating, but I seem to have had endless opportunities for imagination and creativity.

In my opinion, arts and crafts activities are great for, well, everyone!  I think some people might scoff at this.  Some people may see these activities as a waste of time when elsewhere there’s a bottom line to achieve.  When I’ve offered to people before to come over and paint with me (I’ve always got some acrylic paint and dollar store canvases at the ready), I’ve heard things like “no, I don’t know how to paint,” or “I’m not creative at all.”  I don’t buy it.  1) If you don’t know how to dip a brush in a jelly-like substance and then apply it to a solid surface, I’m going to then also assume that you don’t know how to brush your teeth.  2) If you truly are not creative in any way, then it’s fair to assume you have never produced anything that didn’t already exist.  This means any essay you’ve ever submitted in school, any speech you’ve ever had to give, any message you’ve ever texted or scribbled in a greeting card has been plagiarism and the very words you’ve spoken today have been scripted by someone else - your whole life is a LIE… So, you’re either capable of creativity OR you’re a fake human being with poor dental hygiene.  Your choice.

Joking aside, art as therapy is something that truly exists and some people liken creativity to a muscle that just needs to be exercised - it’s a skill like math, but funner (in my opinion, lol).

During my first concussion in 2011, I started drawing and colouring with pencil crayons.  This came after a good friend of mine back home sent me a get well colouring book: an interactive book of all different types of…cartoon monsters!  Yeah, it was meant for kids, but my friend knows me very well and how I never grew up (so I stick my tongue out at you for scoffing at my cartoon monster colouring book).

My elementary school pencil crayon on paper from the printer (2011).  When I look at this, I can't think of a title, all I can think of is the sound of struggling of someone who is trying to feel strong and escape.

More elementary school pencil crayon on paper from the printer (2011).  Yeah, it's emo.  It's accurate.  I dig it.

Another friend then gave me their stock of acrylic paints they no longer used.  I painted two completely opposite landscapes I missed seeing: a prairie sunset and a waterfall in the mountains.  These turned out super well - I impressed myself!  Was it a hidden talent I didn’t know I had?  Or was it enough practice exercising my creative muscles that levelled me up from my ugly kid Christmas ornaments??  I shall never know…

Prairie Sunset.  Acrylic on canvas (2012).

Shannon Falls. Acrylic on canvas (2012).

Once I recovered from my first concussion, I never stopped being creative.  Indeed, if we’re looking at it like therapy, this is the kind you don’t only do when you’re feeling unwell.  Like eating healthy, being active, taking time to de-stress, it’s the kind you continue to practice when you’re also feeling good so that you build up your foundation of tolerance - your resilience - for when shit hits the fan.  I continued my creativity through more painting, card-making and eventually acting and improv classes.

When my most recent concussion did happen in 2015, I already had creative skills and practices at hand.  I even feel like this recovery time has allowed me to invest with more vigour into my creative outlets. I’m now writing sketch comedy, teaching improv, drawing comics and hell, I’m writing this blog!  I’m also seeing this creativity spill over into my work life.  I’m creating games and comics to communicate health education topics and I’ve got program ideas for using improv in other sectors.

Being creative isn’t only for those with fine arts degrees.  Being creative is simply making something out of what is currently nothing and finding the solution no one has yet to produce.  Well, in concussion recovery, it can often seem like I have a lot of nothing and a lot of problems.  From my experience, I can truly say that exercising my creative muscles in arts and crafts has helped me better navigate my woes and problems in other areas of my life, regardless of which spot on my head I have hit.  But seriously, four out of the five times?!?  What are those odds!?  Ack!  Wait!!  That’s math!!!  UGH…I don’t know, I’m so bad at math ever since the injury…yes…since the injury…

What are the odds you will go do something creative right now?!?

Creativity for all!

- Krystal