Feeding the Creative Fire

          To encourage or not to encourage - that is the question. I've always had conflicting emotions about encouraging the artistic elements of my personality - mainly because the creative juices seem to appear in tandem with emotions fluxing in an even more chaotic pattern than normal.
          That being said, taking a year off of work (well 9-5 work), and seeking a better understanding of yourself, the people, and the world around you, will also open a lot self awareness and what I like to think of as a healthier level of self control. Controlling and/or bottling up your emotions, forcing yourself to put on a persona or act in a way that is not natural to yourself are all examples of bad control. All things I had heavy patterns of doing. Now I've more or less learned to control my own reactions to myself. I acknowledge and let the various thoughts or emotions surface naturally (instead of trying to suppress to alter them) and then choose to not react to or follow the lead on the more turbulent ones - I know they are simply passing states and like everything in life, they are never in the next second what they were in the one before.
          Now as I experience another one of my more "Creative" periods (ala "Crazy") periods I am happy to discover my creativity is now a immensely more productive. I am actually able to finish projects, and realize some of the visions I was previously incapable of bringing to fruition. No longer a slave to any flux in creative drive and emotion, I can now channel and accept all those facets and not feel driven or overwhelmed by them. I can harness them all in a way that is productive to whatever I am working on. Basically I can laugh (a lot) at myself - especially when I am being particularly dramarama in my own head. Yay for me haha.
...Now I just need to learn to apply all this vast knowledge and self-awareness to my interpersonal relationships...yeahhhhhhhhhh