“I was taught my art didn’t matter as much as my math, I was taught my opinion didn’t matter if no one else liked it…” – Author of What I Wasn’t Told

As young children, we have a broad sense of imagination and it feels like the sky’s the limit. As we grow and mature, we begin to lose that sense of creativity. While there are school projects that may force us to go out of our way to create something, there are different aspects that could contribute to why we don’t create as much as when we were younger. In elementary school, we are told that we could be anything we ever dreamt of being. In middle school, we are reminded that our jobs need to provide us with money. In high school, we are told to select a reasonable major, even though it doesn’t fit with our liking, and to focus solely on our academics so the colleges would accept us. The older we get, the more our perception of situations changes, and we shift from naive and playful, to focusing on getting a job and seeing where the rest of our future lies. Making and inventing small crafts just doesn’t seem important anymore.

But where would we be without inventors? We evolve from other people’s creations. Blair Somerville from the “Lost and Found” video collects “useless” objects and turns them into amazing crafts. This definitely takes skill, and it’s clear that he’s been passionate about making these types of projects for quite some time. Although this isn’t an ideal job people have in mind, the video has definitely impacted and inspired viewers to tinker with their own designs. For Blair, himself, he was able to showcase his talent to the public. There are still going to be people who put him down for not being an engineer or another profession, but that doesn’t stop Blair from doing what he loves. 

In A Work of Artifice, Marge Piercy wrote “It is your nature to be small and cozy.” People hold themselves back from coming up with brilliant and innovative ideas in fear that it could be rejected, or make them look bad when the idea fails. When it’s only being achieved by a small number of people, the task seems far out of reach. This includes making a movie, writing a successful story, or even composing a song. People tend to only focus on academics because making silly songs isn’t going to get you into Harvard. Personally, I like using different resources to make gifts for people. I continued doing this in my free time because it’s something I enjoy, and the people receiving the gifts are normally appreciative about it. This blog post is an example of creating as well. Just like the clothes we wear and the music we listen to, creativity is how we express ourselves. We express ourselves through the things we make, even through the little crafts. The bottom line is you don’t have to be the smartest person to be successful. The most successful people are the ones who are different, the ones who worked hard and were persistent to what they were devoted to, regardless of how impossible others said it was. You are capable of more than you are told, it’s whether or not you’re putting that skill to use, to make something new.