BREEDING CREATIVITY

I used to think I was intelligent, until I started learning graphics design. I saw a lot of beautiful designs and admired them. So eager to learn, I used all my savings to get a laptop, it wasn’t new, but it was all I could afford. The idea of creating my own beautiful design was so much in my mind that I was continually looking forward to it, until my boss told me the theoretical part of the whole learning process would take about six weeks. In my mind, a month and two weeks seemed like forever, and the thought of going to work everyday to sit down and listen to someone talk for hours was already tiring. All I wanted to do was design and these people were holding me back, so I decided to learn on my own thinking I would be able to fast forward the learning process. I saw myself as that bright and special student that needed no teacher to succeed until I opened the corel draw environment only to find out that navigating my way around was very difficult. There were nice videos online to learn from, but in my ears, I was finding it difficult to understand the English they spoke.

Everything looked strange to me, if I felt like I was swimming alone in the ocean, with no navigation to point to where I was truly going. I gave up after two days of not understanding the things I was watching from youtube. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t that I could not understand, it was that I never had the patience to learn. Those six weeks looked like hell. I can remember how happy I was on the last Friday of the sixth week. Finally I would be able to do some designs on Monday, I thought to myself. I knew I had already learned the theory, and it was going to be a walk in the park with the practicals. Monday came, and then I realized the difference between a doctor and a professor of medicine. I knew everything to do in my mind, but no matter how much I tried it wasn’t just coming out well. I remember giving up right there and then, my boss looked at my frustration and said; ”Now you can see you have a lot to learn, so better sit down and learn”

Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

For the first time I did not feel special anymore, I did not feel like the genius I thought I was, I started to follow the instruction of my boss by sitting down with those who were already good with designs and watching them make their beautiful designs. I started to watch, and at first it felt like I was doing nothing until I saw a random design and could spot errors from it. I discovered that the beautiful design pictures I had in my head then were still there, but this time they were more concrete with not just the finished product, but some ideas about how to get the job done. After about three weeks of watching the pros work, I decided to do a design for my church's program. I made efforts to get the job, and when I did, I put in all my efforts to create what was called a beautiful design. When I showed it to the person who was going to review the design, the expression in his face said it all. I went back to the office to show my boss, his frustration was evident because I used his name to get a job he had been trying so hard to get yet did a wack job.

After that day I discovered an issue with my laptop, barely three months old, and it was already having major issues. One week later my laptop crashed and with nothing to practice with personally, I was relegated to watching the pros work from observation. I observed for over a year, until one day my boss out of the blue asked me to create a design for the company. It was a design that was needed that week and I spent four days working on it with his laptop. When I was done, he said he did not want to see it, and instructed me to show it to one of the pros to evaluate it. The guy I showed it to looked at my design and smiled. Then he asked me how I did certain things and I told him. He asked where I got the idea, and I told him I tore a page out of his book. When my boss finally saw the design, he could not imagine how I did it. According to him, the flare of that design was like it was from the guy that reviewed it. It was then I understood the importance of guidance. I had sat under one person for over a year as an observer, and now I was able to replicate what he did effortlessly.

THIS IS MY ENTRY INTO THE INKWELL CREATIVE NONFICTION PROMPT #146