Creativity: Amy of Happily Ever Now

Post 6 of HEIA: Creativity.

So I've never met Amy of Happily Ever Now, but her blog has become one of my favorites: it's clear full of joy and optimism. Finding the silver-lining (and then writing about it) is how Amy is creative. Read on to discover a little more for yourself:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Attention: this is not Hannah.

Don’t click away yet! My name is Amy, and Hannah graciously invited me to write for her blog today! And I am absolutely excited that she did. I’m twenty years old, a college junior studying elementary education at BYU, and I write my own stories over at Happily Ever Now.

this is the only non-awkward picture of myself I could find.
just kidding! ...because even this one is kind of awkward. baha

Hannah extended to me the question: what does creativity mean to you? The story I’d like to tell you is about writing. And since every story has a beginning, this one starts on a particular day in May.

I ran out of the high school that day, jumped into my little silver sedan and began to drive. I was seventeen years old, and I needed to get home and sit down at my computer as fast as I could. My mind was racing, and I was struggling to sort out the thoughts that were ricocheting wildly around in my head.

These thoughts weren’t even about boys… and as a seventeen year old girl that was pretty rare (kidding— kind of).

I had just spent four hours taking my AP Composition exam in the stuffy, pastel-colored school library—and my life was changed forever. I discovered that day, that I loved writing.

I’d always known I liked writing, but after spending those hours writing as powerfully as I could, I realized that I loved writing more than I loved Oreos (which is, like, pretty monumental.) I loved writing more than I loved sleeping, more than I loved jumping on trampolines, and even more than I loved shopping (shut the front door!). On that day in sweltering Las Vegas, under the hum of the air conditioner, surrounded by cranky teenagers, I fell in love with writing.

So I went home, and I wrote about it. Here is the sum of what I came up with:

With words, we can capture the essence of life. With words, we can find ways to express ourselves and the world around us. And that is so incredibly beautiful and powerful.

And so I write. I write stories on my blog, usually transforming embarrassing scenarios and crummy days into something to laugh about (sometimes I walk into boys bathrooms on accident). I pour my soul into my thick, hand-written journal that I love with all my heart. I write letters, I write notes, I write stories. I think we feel most alive when we are creating something, anything! My favorite type of creating just happens to do with words.



Find ways you can create. You don’t have to be a writer, you don’t have to be a musician, and you don’t have to have an amazing decorated home (like all the people on pinterest… do houses really look like that?) Just find a way to make the world a more beautiful place because of your ideas.

Life can be ugly if you look at it a certain way, and that’s the truth. I know this because I now go to school where it snows a lot in the winter, and the snow usually turns black, and then it melts into dirty ice which pops up all over the sidewalks—especially the areas where I walk to class—and then I slip and fall on it. And sometimes I wake up late and don’t have time to fully utilize my hair dryer and my hair freezes when I’m walking to campus and then I cry. Sometimes the sky is gray for days on end, and I get a sore throat, because I’m a Las Vegas girl and I wasn’t built for temperatures below 60 degrees and then I cover myself in blankets and decide to live life as a hermit in my apartment. (And I’m totally not a drama queen about it either!)

But then, I read a beautiful book for my children’s lit class, and I feel like I see the whole world in a different light. And I attend a choir concert, and it’s so beautiful that I completely forget what day it is and where I am. The notes flow around me and my soul becomes very warm and everything becomes surprisingly clear and wonderful. And then I meet a total stranger who inspires me so much that I feel like I can accomplish anything and I want to become a better, less hermit-like person. And then I walk outside, and I see the snow, and the dirty ice and the gray, cracked sidewalks, and I realize that life is beautiful.

And that, new friends, is why creativity is important to me.

P.S.

Want to add your voice to the discussion on creativity? E-mail me at hannahmoore2007 at hotmail dot com for more details.