Ep 5 - Multipotentialites and Creativity, a conversation with Melissa Dinwiddie

Hi, it's Thomas. I'm continuing to explore the concept of multipotentiality and in this episode, I have a conversation with author and creativity instigator, Melissa Dinwiddie. and we talk about what it's like to be creative when you have so many different interests. I learned some new things in this conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it too.

Music Credit: 

Reflection Flow by Doxent Zsigmond (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/doxent/58328 Ft: Javolenus, Rocavaco, Siobhan Dakay

 

Links for this episode:

Melissa Dinwiddie - melissadinwiddie.com and creativesandbox.solutions

 

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Creative Sandbox Way, by Melissa Dinwiddie

Refuse to Choose, by Barbara Sher

The above are affiliate links.

 

Thomas: Hello, and welcome to the Creative Shoofly Podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about my creative process and one thing I've found is that I really get in my way a lot when it comes to making art and being creative. I want to do this podcast because I know it will force me to think more deeply about creativity. I'm hoping that doing this will push me and challenge me to create better art.    

Thomas: Hello, Melissa. How are you doing?

Melissa: Hi, Thomas. I'm doing pretty good today. How about you?

Thomas: I'm doing great.

For my listeners, this is Melissa Dinwiddie. She is the author of one of my favorite books on creativity. It's the Creative Sandbox Way, Your Path to a Full Color Life. Melissa's art includes drawing and painting, calligraphy, singing, dancing, music loops, animation, stage improv.

And I'm sure there are a lot of others.

Melissa: It's kinda, it's kind of neat hearing them listed out.

Thomas: Melissa, I've been thinking a lot about, and learning a lot about this concept of the multipotentialite.  And you refer to it as passion-pluralite, which I love the term because it really gets to the core of the way that I see it. And that is having lots of different passions. 

And one of the things that I've been wondering about, and the reason I wanted to have this conversation with you is about, how do passion-pluralites stay creative when they have so many passions?

Melissa: I like the way you asked the question, because so often what happens for people who have lots of different creative interests is we get paralyzed and we end up doing nothing because I think what a lot of us do is we feel like, well,  if I pick one of my creative loves, then that necessarily means that I'm saying no forever to all of the other ones, all of my other loves.

And so, it feels like you're killing all of your darlings, and that of course, that's paralyzing.

And, and so you either, it's kind of like this black and white thinking makes you feel like you either have to do all of them all the time, or none of them. Which is like somebody is holding a gun to your head.

Nobody's actually holding a gun to anybody's head. 

But I remember a moment. I was in my mid-thirties, maybe early thirties, and I was living in an apartment. And I remember I was, I was going out of my mind because I think at the time I was taking fiddle lessons. I pulled out my Viola after 28 years and I was playing viola, I might've been, I've been borrowing a violin at the time. I can't remember, but I was taking a swing fiddle lessons again, or, you know, for, for seven years and years and years playing violin again, or voila whichever one.

And I was sewing. And I think I was signed up to take like a couture sewing workshop or something, and I had a calligraphy business and that was really important to me.

And I think at the time I had gotten, I think this was right at the time when I was starting to get into jazz singing, or I hadn't been before I was getting into jazz singing, but I was doing a lot of singing.

And I was, I can't remember all the other things that I was doing, but it was just like, there's so many things that I was trying to do at the same time.

And I was going completely bonkers. I mean, there was no way I could do all of them.

And I suddenly had this realization that, it seems so simple now looking back at it. But it was like, this epiphany, it was like this light bulb moment when I realized, "I do get to do everything, just not all at the same time."

And it was like, bing!

And so I thought, I thought, okay, okay.  I know that I can’t limit myself to one because I'll be miserable. Cause I've tried that in the past.

For years, I had thought to myself, if