Creative Compulsion

This blog started years ago as my personal digital diary. Wasn’t always pretty, sometimes was entertaining but was always MY place to say what I thought, when and how I wanted. I got away from that for a time. I really got irritated one day to find my blog listed among many others on a site. The site was a ’study’ of sorts and inferred that personal blogs were arrogant because who really cared but the writer? I never thought of it as arrogant, but it stopped me from writing for a long time. Recently, I’ve asked myself why I write. Even though my day to day life involves auctions, my websites and online businesses, I am still ME. I’m not just an eBay ID or a domain name.

The domain itself, creativecompulsion.com, is highly personal. To those who experience it, no explanation is needed. Do a search on Google for the term and you’ll find it referenced over and over again. For those not blessed (or cursed) with it, it’s exactly as the name implies. An inner drive to create. It could be anything: drawings, jewelry, poetry, photographs, bouquets. Anything, everything - the inner compulsiveness doesn’t release you until you create. For me, its many of those things. I create jewelry and website templates. I love to draw and paint. Mainly, I write.

Why a blog? That part was simple to answer after I gave it some thought. The human connection. The blog makes my journal no less valuable, but adds an element that my private writing will never have: the ability to connect with others. As humans, we are naturally relational creatures. We won’t admit it but we stare at the train wrecks, we quietly cheer on the underdog, we love to tell secrets and gossip? We thrive on it. A personal blog provides that in a private, yet very public, way. I can’t begin to express the encouragement, friendship, and sense of kinship I’ve felt through the emails and comments my readers have sent as this piece of ‘net real estate has evolved over the years.

So is that arrogant? I think not. And personally speaking, I think I’ll be a bit more personal from now on.