People that know me pretty well, know that my dating life before marriage looked a bit like the fridge a day before the grocery shop. Not ideal. Until Josh, I could count the number of dates I’d had on one hand. They were all group dates, and all but one, were also blind dates. This is how I grew some pretty passionate views about dating.
Although not always super rewarding, a blind date usually gives for some pretty interesting stories. Like the time my supposed date, brought his own date, and my friend rushed around like crazy trying to find a replacement after asking three different guys. Or when my date made it painfully clear that he was not interested by giving me the whole, “I don’t know if I’ll ever get married. Or maybe I might in my forties.”
Fun times. Ha.
But the story I want to share today is by far my favourite. There was four of us. My friend and her date, her date’s friend (I’ll call him Mr. Date) and me. We were already in Sydney for a church activity so the guys decided to take us into the city to see Vivid. This was the first time I’d ever heard about Vivid and I thought it was ridiculously incredible! More on Vivid later.
We all caught the train in together, but once we got there we separated from one another with a plan to meet up later. Just to give you some context, I was 21 at the time and in the history of my life, no guy had ever taken visible interest in me. I was pretty good at not getting my hopes up and just taking everything as a life lesson.
Well, I don’t know if I was giving off 'crazy girlfriend' vibes, but for some reason, the second I was alone with Mr. Date, he asked what my expectations of this date were, and made it perfectly clear that he was not looking for a relationship. And you just know that I was thoroughly disappointed. Didn't he want to see my wedding scrapbook? I mean I barely got to tell him about the names of our four children. Gosh, darn.
*Face palm*
Once I cleared up the you’re-not-into-me-and-I’m-not-into-you-let’s-just-be-people-having-a-nice-time thing, Mr. Date then expressed great relief because I was definitely too tall for him anyway. Seriously?
I mean what happened to the mystery on a date? No, let's be super forward and blunt.
I mean, I had noticed that you were a little shorter than me, and I’ve always wanted someone a little taller than me too, but I wasn’t actually planning on saying that to your face. Ah bless.
That Mr. Date was a bit of a youngster, and needed some serious tips in the dating department. The night was not yet complete without an extremely vague discussion about him not wanting to pay for my food, and then to top it off, after Mr. Date had already rejected me based on my horrendous height issues, he then asked that if he were in a relationship looking state of mind, would he be someone that I’d be interested in?
Some people would call it an absolute train wreck. I see it as a beautifully hilarious story! I will be telling my children about it one day.
Looking back on this and many other experiences I think I was too involved at the time to see that my life was very much like a romantic comedy. Just missing all the romance.
*Bah dum ching*
All jokes aside, I loved the Vivid experience. Once I got married I figured that I could have a date do-over with someone I actually liked, and who didn’t care about my height. So sitting at a high and early number five, I added… go see Vivid.
If you really want to do something, sometimes you need to work a little more for it.
The Vivid experience taught me two different things. The first is that desire is not always enough. If you really want to do something, sometimes you need to work a little more for it. I wanted to go to Vivid. I’d tried to get us there for two years before hand. For the first year, Uni and other life things got prioritized. We hadn’t made time for it and we couldn’t find any in the calendar. For the second year, we made more of an effort, but it rained the night we planned to go and a two hour train trip both ways for an hours stay just didn’t seem all that appealing.
Sitting down and making Nike plans gave us the opportunity to see what hadn’t work and make plans for success. The second time round we’d already graduated from not making calendar space for the desirable things, but we hadn’t accounted for travel or weather. Third time round we took those things on and planned to find a place in the city to stay – also giving ourselves a mini vacation. Five months later and we were keen to get there!
Creativity is fluid and beautifully different.
The actual vivid experience was a wonderful thought and sense provoking experience. As serendipity would have it, I had recently been reading a book that focused on expressing yourself and exploring creativity through various mediums. Reading this book had got me into a super cool mindset where I stood in such wonder and gratitude for new ideas, different perspectives and things that I don’t understand. I’m a drama kid, so I’m familiar with creativity. But some aspects, like art, there are bits that I have kind of written off because I don’t understand. Walking around and looking at the incredible installations I had a mind shift and I started to see all forms of creativity as beautiful. And the definition of beauty had changed.
I felt this change stay with me as I taught a history class the following week. Working on a title page for Ancient Egypt, I walked around the room looking at each student’s work and felt appreciation for the creative expressions, regardless of the skill level. When one student started joking about the ‘poor quality’ of his friends drawing, I jumped to defend his creativity and how important it is to foster creativity.
I started getting really jazzed about re-evaluating what creativity meant for me and in that process I decided it was time to break down some old ideas that were actually limitations. For a long time I had thought my forms of creativity came through my drama work. Drawing was something I always admired, but I wasn’t super good at. Or even mildly good at. I looked at my younger sister and thought her as the one with cool design and style skills. I didn’t have them either. But the more that I started to believe that creativity was beautiful in a thousand different shapes and sizes and views, the more I began to flourish in new creative paths! I even went as far as to add it to the list. But that’s enough for today’s storytelling. Let me finish by reminding you that you ARE creative.
Yes.
You.
So go create beautiful things!
