What brings the creator out of you?

Personal growth is messy and scary, but the greatest gift our good lives give us. I have never been one to remain stagnant, a stillness comes in many forms, and the more I look over my life as it is and as it was I can see this quite clearly.

I never set out to be a content creator, I let the opinions of others convince me that my creativity was awkward and not useful, in fact, I never really set out with any real goal or driving mission to my life. I latched onto the opportunities that presented themselves and the ideas that they taught me. Brick by brick I built myself a vast library of knowledge and experiences, which sounds so much better than 'Jack of all trades, master of none.', and from that, I have taken many different lessons and applied them to many different moments. So to answer the question posed by my title, the desire to grow, learn and to keep moving; that is what brought the creator out of me and the right timing.

Without any real goal in mind, I let others and the world take the wheel of my life for the most part. The thing is yes I had my own opinions, however, I didn't have a clue what to do with them. Keeping in mind that I was bullied into believing that I had no good ideas, that I could never be creative in a positive or contributing way; I had lost my ability to assert my own ideas. I've decided that I don't want this post to turn into my biography so I feel that this is enough information on this topic...

Once I was out of school my parents sent me to Europe to live with family and see more of the world, an experience that I hope to be able to provide for my children in the future, however, while I was there I said yes to almost every suggestion made to me and really was just along for the ride. I had known about the trip for years and never once looked into what I might do or see while I travelled abroad. This aimless venturing would continue upon my return to Canada; though there are many stories I could rabbit hole down with you the next major relevant moment was at a bar. Friends of my family offered me a job in the industry of Scaffolding, something I stuck with mostly for the better part of 9 years, now how this path really made me who I am today is in two ways. The first lesson learned was that everyone can teach you something, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing doesn't matter, so long as your mind is open to learning it. The Second comes from the diversity of those I worked with; accountants, nurses, retail sales, business school graduates, exotic dancers, carpenters, government workers, are just some of the walks of life that people came from before they were scaffolders. In combination those lessons added many sources of information to my mental library, I have said that all of life's lessons can be found in scaffolding and the people have a lot to do with that. The interesting thing about this is that eventually this 'riding the waves' passive attitude did give me the opportunity to reconnect with myself.

"At some point, we have to learn to adapt what we know"

Well, it's all good and well to have a library full of information if you can't read it or see how to apply it to future situations it's not going to help you in your creativity. At some point, we have to learn to adapt what we know to where we are in life. For myself, this comes in the form of loose connections, abstract connections, things that just pop into my mind and then following those thoughts to see how they apply to what I am doing at that moment. This leads back to the basic idea of adaptation, 'adapt or die' is one of my favourite quotes, taking what we know and reflecting on how it may apply to what we are doing. I'm sure there are other ways to adapt to knowledge, and I would love to hear how you do it.

The last point I want to touch on is timing. I started vlogging our geocaching adventures when we started into the hobby in 2016, from there we grew to try our hands at nearly every social media platform. Then MANY different things happened and I was off of work for a year, to the exact date, while I was on this year off I started to expand my horizons as a content creator. Financially I was limited in what I could do, however, I tried to learn what I could and try new things. I must say that I did NOT use my time effectively, and was forced to learn and grow a lot of it after I had returned to work. It does stand to note that it was that point that sparked me on my journey to where I am now. I Again was just looking to follow the flow and wasn't really sure where it was going to take me, then I found some amazing folks, Harris Heller for one, who make their content around helping other people make better content. Harris, once upon a time, inspired me to create my podcast (not intentionally) it grew from a comment of using each form of social media to create unique and different content and from that I asked myself "what could these different things be?" and "What do feel most comfortable sharing with the world?"

Writing this blog I came to realize that there is an underlying motivation of proving people wrong about my creativity. Which is totally fine, and is not the primary reason by far, and its something I can live with. As I mentioned being bullied was a large part as to why it took me so long to come into the sphere of content creation, much of that I suffered silently, with that experience I hope that my children will come to me when they need a boost to follow their passions.

Take a moment to reflect on someone you have little care for and ask yourself "what did they teach me?"; maybe you will expand your library. I hope you will move forward in all your opportunities, and not let the time slip you by.

~Devin~

#PersonalGrownth #MyStory #NewAdventures