A show in National Geographic channel called Brain Games
revealed that an adult’s imagination isn't as good as his/her imagination when
he/she was a kid. It somewhat relates to me. When I was a teenager, I had all
kind of imagination and creativity which resulted in plenty of writings,
fiction writings mostly. In Junior High School, I wrote 3 (uncompleted) fiction
novels, and I wrote a number of short stories during the Senior High School
years. All of them, of course, were written in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian
language). One of my literature teachers was very impressed with my short
fiction story and she recommended me to join a writing competition held by my
school. I did, and I won the 1st place. Winning that competition gave me a
boost of confidence. In the senior year of high school, I along with four of my
classmates did a research about public health in the riverside neighborhood and
we won the 3rd place in a research writing competition held by a local
university with Chevron.
Then, slowly but sure, I started to lose my niche, my muse,
my inspiration. As time goes by, I’m growing from a teenager into a young
adult. Growing up is hard. Responsibilities and expectations are filling
rapidly in my mind that I can no longer think of anything else. College is a
place where I got caught up with constantly working on assignments, projects, etc.
Then comes the family affairs, my love affairs, school affairs, friend affairs,
and before I know it, I have no more space in my life for the imagination and
creativity which I used to abundantly had. This blog as an example. I used to
write fascinating things and I used to have a theme for every post with
pictures and everything. Now I just write my daily activity which contains
nothing extraordinary, really.
Last year, after watching Suits (it’s a serial movie about
lawyers in Pearson Hardman/Darby law firm in New York), I came up with some
fiction story ideas. Not completely related to the law world, but they have a
wee bit of it. I got stuck after writing 7 pages. Then it hits me. I’m not that
good at writing novel or short story anymore. My imagination fits better with
screen writing. From that moment on, I turned my writing skill into a new
direction. The results? I came up with 6 new screenwriting ideas. Well, of
course, they’re still unfinished yet but plenty of ideas are flowing each and
every day. Even when I’m writing this post. Of course, as my English ability is
getting better, I write all the screenwriting in English and mostly involve the
way Americans live their life.
Maybe it’s true what Brain Games said about adult’s ability
in imagination and hence affecting the creativity. I also find that maybe all
we (as adults) need to do is pause. Reflects on what we used to good at when we
were younger, and on the reason why we no longer do it anymore. Then maybe, we
will find something new that we’re good at. Maybe it’s similar with the old
thing we used to do, or maybe it’s a brand new thing that we never thought we
had. Who knows? Life is full of unexpected things.
