One-Eyed Monsters & Such

Once upon a time, I actually felt creative. I played trumpet.  I wrote stories.  When I was younger, I even (poorly) illustrated them.  But somewhere along the way…it happened. I turned into an adult. And that meant one thing – automatic boredom.  Right after college graduation, I exchanged the fun, leisure pursuits of my younger years for legal assistanthood.  Goodbye fun, hello responsibility.

A few years later, because I had gotten so good at living on the edge, I did something even more exciting – I went to law school.  Nothing kills your creative spirit like dense cases about contract disputes or opinions written in 1823 that are nearly impossible to decipher. Still, I was making an investment in my future.  By entering a practical profession, one where people drove BMWs and drank wine that cost more than $7 per bottle, I would have a great career and buy the time to get back to music and writing and reading and whatever fun things I wanted to do on the weekends.

That was before they told me that there would be few weekends. That being a lawyer would mean constant work, and that even when I wasn’t at work, I would be thinking about work or be contacted by my bosses.  That no matter how hard I worked it would never be hard enough.  That when I got home the last thing I’d be able to do would be read a book after having stared at small text on a computer screen all day. I learned that if I was going to pursue anything beyond work, it would take a huge kick in the butt.

Then Anna came along. And somehow, even though she introduced a new level of exhaustion to my life, she also invigorated me. She continues to inspire me.

“Play Play-Doh with me, mom!” she beckoned one day. I sat down. But instead of something easy like a fish, she asked me to fashion Beaker and Bunsen Honeydew, two of her favorite Muppets, out of Play-Doh.  Seriously?!  But I did it. What resulted certainly wouldn’t win any artistic awards, as you can see, but it sure amused Anna. Which was really all that mattered.

Beaker and Bunsen Honeydew

This became a routine. My Play-Doh creations soon evolved to include other Muppets, animals like snakes, and, my personal favorite, one-eyed monsters like the ones from Yo Gabba Gabba and Monsters Inc.  They were the easiest to do, and they delighted Anna.  Soon she was asking me to draw them on our driveway with sidewalk chalk!  She cries sometimes when they wash away, but I remind her that we can always draw them again.

There’s a lesson there – reinvention.

Becoming a parent is the most remarkable, life-changing experience I’ve ever had. I bet it is the same way with many of you.  You lose “you” and must focus on the needs of another person before your own, always, without question.  But you gain something far more important then whatever it was you did before:  the deepest love you could ever know.

And you become someone else.  The old you is still there, but you’re somehow different, better. Use it.  Reinvent yourself.

Of course, I’m not advocating that you quit your day job and draw monsters instead. (Even though, admit it, it could be way more fun.)  I’m simply suggesting that you take whatever new interests or creative impulses you’ve developed by trying to engage your child, and let them inspire you to put the new and better you to use in a different way.  Think outside the box.

After all, besides entertaining your kids, you do need a creative outlet, some mechanism for personal fulfillment that you can fit into your already busy life.

For me, it meant starting this blog.  I thought about the enjoyment I got from trying to create whatever Anna wanted on demand, and remembered that I used to like drawing and writing and reading. I used to actually have an imagination, and, through playing with Anna, I slowly brought it out of hiding and started to use it again.

I thought about that and other huge changes in me since I began raising this amazing kid. And I put the two together with this result. It may not be the best blog out there, but it’s fun to share stories and connect with people.  It gives me something to do with my spare time that I actually enjoy.

It’s my one-eyed monster.  What will yours be?

Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc.