Personal Narrative Analysis

Creativity continues to be a difficult word for me to define succinctly. Yet throughout my journey of self-reflection and self-realization, incited by Dr. Johnson’s course, Leadership & Innovation, I notice that I am doggedly pursuing mastery of the creative energy within me. In this pursuit, I have learned that truly embracing and knowing and utilizing my own creativity requires a fearlessness, free of self-conscious worry and self-judgment. There’s a quote---whose source has been debated (Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, or Vladimir Horowitz)---that sheds light on this lesson in the need for the creator’s need for courage. The quote goes, “The thing is to become a master, and in your old age acquire the courage to do what children did
Songwriting had long been a creative outlet that I utilized. However, until I began this creative project, I had not written a song in over six years. I learned to play guitar when I was thirteen, and quickly began imitating my musical heroes (Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Conor Oberst). Over time, the original songs I wrote tended to take on a somber, often morose and despairing tone. I quickly began associating this creative activity with emotional negativity and volatility. In college, this association only grew stronger as I began drinking heavily and writing while under the influence. All my songs were written from the perspective of a despairing hopeless romantic. After college, however, I lacked the motivation and enthusiasm I once had for the process, and gradually stopped writing altogether. Unfortunately, my drinking did fade away. It consumed me, as it often does many
Still, I decided to also incorporate elements of Koberg and Bagnall’s Universal Traveler Model. The latter model has five steps: accept the situation, analyze, define, ideate, select, implement, evaluate. While I didn’t follow the Universal Traveler model accurately, I pondered on the “ideate” step, where one is to generate options for a given challenge. Even when I considered other ways to approach songwriting, I hadn’t considered changing the subject matter slightly. I was so fixated on writing a standard love song, a musical portrait of my fiancee, that I hadn’t considered other options to achieve the true goal. This is when I realized that my goal was not the love song, my goal was to write a song that showed my fiancee that I love her. That meant the song did not necessarily have to be an illustration of her beauty, intelligence, or compassion. It could be anything as long as it conveyed that she means a great deal to