Many people have told me I’m creative. Teachers. My family. Friends. Even students, once they get past the inherent conflict in teacher-student relationships, comment on my creativity.
Given all of this feedback about my creativity, I was convinced as a kid that I would do something creative with my life. Be a writer. Make movies. Be some kind of artist. Later, I figured I might turn into a comedian. Or an actor.
Well, here I am at age 43, y’all. I’m but simple college professor. I’ve spent more time as a public educator than anything else. Yes, I’m a writer. And I’m an improviser. And I’ve built or participated in hundreds of creative and strange projects over the years. Many of those have been funny. Or thought-provoking. Or wild. Books, plays, scripts, essays, improv performances, etc. But I haven’t cultivated much of an audience for myself. Not famous or rich. Far from it. Just a humble educator who has worked very hard to make lots of things during my life.
***
I was talking about my creativity with my therapist last week.
Yes, I have a therapist and yes, I talk (and/or write) about having a therapist quite a bit. I don’t see anything to be ashamed. Meeting regularly to dream with somebody else feels like a reasonable thing to do. It seems healthy. Last week I told my therapist how cool it was he got to meet so many different people and, as I put it, dance with their psyches. He thought that was a good way to describe therapy. I think it is a good way to describe improv, writing, and teaching.
Anyway.
We talked at length about my creativity. I expressed pride in the work I’ve accomplished so far. I’m proud of my books. I’m proud of the improv I’ve been a part of. The plays I’ve written and directed. The multimodal literacy projects I’ve been around. All of my intellectual work. Still, I can’t pretend that I’ve gotten much in the way of compensation for my creativity. Or that much validation. I’ve made lots of people laugh and have heard from others about their positive experiences with my writing. That always feels good. I’ve heard people share unpleasant experiences with my work too. That usually makes me laugh. Ultimately, I’m no celebrity. My royalty checks are, in a word, dim. My ongoing joke about calling myself a best-selling author and by best-selling I mean worst-selling rings true.
I think the the creative work I’m most proud of is my teaching. I’ve built and led some wild classes over the last twenty-years. I’m currently doing that again with students at The University of Iowa. There is something satisfying and sacred about building and leading meaningful pedagogical exeperiences. There’s not much in validation in being an educator. It’s humbling work. Both in terms of a paycheck and immediate reward. Still, there’s something that feels powerful about pouring myself into my classrooms. Pouring my psyche into my classroom. So I keep doing it, midlife crises be damned.
***
I don’t know what is next for me. I talked with my therapist about wanting to work less hard as I get older.
I used to write a poem every morning. Just a part of my writing process. Stream-of-consciousness stuff. I’m sure, in my twenties, I was doing this because I thought I would be William Blake. And there would probably be anthologies of my work sold for millions of dollars at auctions. Shrines set up in veneration of my brilliance. What a fool I was. Yes, I have thousands upon thousands of poems saved on my computer, but I have no real desire to do anything with them. Recently, I stopped writing a poem a day. And someday I might stop writing a blog a week. It’s good to be creative but, in some ways, I want to think differently about how I channel that creativity as I get older. I’ll still write poems and blogs, but I don’t need to be so obsessive. My frenetic energy is waning a little. There’s still lots there, but it feels different now than it did in my twenties and thirties.
What do I have to show for all of that frenetic energy? I don’t think I’ve made my masterpiece yet. But I also don’t know that I haven’t. As I wrote, I’m proud of my books, the improv and plays I’ve been a part of, and my academic catalogue. Even my poetry, though I never got into the MFA program in poetry at The University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. If I’m being really honest, I’m most proud of the classrooms I’ve created. Those experiences with students are dust. They’ve long since returned to the earth. Still, something sacred happened in my work to connect with other people and, though my memories grow distant, I know that my soul was shaped and that other souls were shaped through the hard and creative work of coming together across difference. How were those souls shaped? I don’t know for sure. And I don’t think I care to know. I just have a faith that what happened mattered and will keep mattering.
I don’t know what I’ll create next, but I know I’m not done. I’m never done. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, I’ll keep doing what I muddily-must until I bodily-bust. And what must I keep doing? Building things. I’m a creator and I always will be.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 