Creativity is a Vampire.

I’ve been bitten by a creative vampire.

I oftentimes feel like I’ve been bitten by a creative vampire.  In my mind, he looks a little bit like Alexander Skarsgard from True Blood (just kidding, he looks EXACTLY like him).  In my interpretation of vampire lore, there are a few things that can happen.  Again, this all comes from my extreme obsession and extensive knowledge of the True Blood/Sookie Stackhouse universe. If you are offended by extended vampiric metaphors, this post is not for you.

Creativity is a vampire, and you, my dear, have but three choices:  

1. Just get bit.  Getting bitten is passive.  Getting bitten allows the vampire to enter, but it sucks you dry.  You lose vitality and energy having the creature in your life, because it is just taking from you, and you aren’t giving anything back to it. Sure, it may feel good to have access to this new thing, but if you take no action? It’ll eventually be curtains for you.  

2.  Bite back.  Turns out, you can bite the vampire right back.  Sink your teeth into the thing and see how it likes the turn of the cards.  This gives you extreme bursts of energy, and it also provides you with a taste of what its like to be in union with vampire, but the feelings are fleeting at best.  There’s no long-term gratification.

3. Get turned.  Yep…you can go whole hog.  Eventually, you can’t stand it anymore, and you need to be with that force at all hours of the day and night, and the only way to stand next to the vampire at all times is to become one with it.  Sure, you might have to give up a couple of your creature comforts, but you already know it’s worth it.  This has an adjustment period, as all metamorphoses do, but the immortality associated with being the vampire yourself is too alluring to resist.

I warned you.  That was a pretty extended metaphor.  It’s so apt, though.  If you let an idea just sit around and “bite” you, those little inklings and what ifs and “shit, if only I had more time I could do x and y” are some of the worst, giant sucking feelings in the world.  It’s so fun to get a novel idea, but if you don’t do anything about it, that’s when your trouble starts.  Once you start “biting back,” and actually materializing those ideas that have popped into your brain, the outrageous bursts of pride and energy are intoxicating, but it seems that the highs don’t last very long.  What needs to happen, to really sustain the communion between the human and the creative energy, is a full commitment.  Once you give up control to the creative process and realize that you are a channel for information—a megaphone for a creative life force that cannot exist or speak without you—once you become one with it? That’s the key to feeling immortal on this earthly plane.