The Mind of the Creative

This is a cool article. It's neat because it's like Gary A. Davis is actually talking about me. I guess he is. Since I'm a creative type. But it's neat because I can now say, "Hey! See? That's why I'm like this! He pretty much hits the nail on the head with everything he says.

I'm not absentminded or forgetful though, because I have a neurotic fear of being that way. Like I have a neurotic fear of being late. I am a risk taker and I'm not afraid of failure. I recently tried for a job at my company that I didn't get, but I didn't take it personally and asked the manager to keep me in mind for future positions. No biggie.

But I can be rebellious and I do get bored with triviality. And I hate boredom. Hate. It. But I can amuse myself so I'm rarely bored. If somebody gives me a super long explanation to something that only requires a sentence or two, I tend to zone out. Give me the short version.

Here is a blurb from the article. It's worth reading if you are a creative type or if you're close to one. Useful info to know, as I know I'm a bit of an enigma to some who know me. Thank God my fella knows me and understands. He just lets me be me :)

Creative Personality Traits

"Creativity" is not just a collection of intellectual abilities. It is also a personality type, a way of thinking and living. Although creative people tend to be unconventional, they share common traits. For example, creative thinkers are confident, independent, and risk-taking. They are perceptive and have good intuition. They display flexible, original thinking. They dare to differ, make waves, challenge traditions, and bend a few rules.

Like all of us, creative people make mistakes, and they subject themselves to embarrassment and humiliation. They must be willing to fail. Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, even recommended that one route to success was to "double your failure rate."

One particularly common trait of creative people is enthusiasm. The phrases "driving absorption," "high commitment," "passionate interest," and "unwilling to give up" describe most creative people. The high energy also appears in adventurous and thrill-seeking activities. Don't some of your most creative colleagues ride motorcycles, fly airplanes, sky dive, climb cliffs, or downhill ski?

Curiosity and wide interests are related traits, whether the creative person is a research scientist, entrepreneur, artist, or professional entertainer. A good sense of humor is common. Creative people tend to have a childlike sense of wonder and intrigue, and an experimental nature. They may take things apart to see how they work, explore old attics or odd museums, or explore unusual hobbies and collections. In other words, "the creative adult is essentially a perpetual child—the tragedy is that most of us grow up."

Another interesting combination some creative people display is a tolerance for complexity and ambiguity and an attraction to the mysterious. Creative thinking requires working with incomplete ideas: relevant facts are missing, rules are cloudy, "correct" procedures nonexistent.



Update:

My number one negative trait? If there were a photo next to the term Easily Distracted in the dictionary, you'd see my smiling face in it.

Also, in extremely stressful situations or even times of prolonged stress, things stop making sense to me and I have to take a breather. I may even get lost on roads I travel on all the time. Suddenly unable to remember where things are. Those streets and roads may seem foreign to me when I'm freaked out. Which, of course, freaks me out even more, exacerbating the situation.

Oh, and I take back the absentmindedness thing. I can be absentminded. I might put the milk in the cabinet and the coffee mug in the fridge. I do that shit all the time.