A story on CREATIVITY

My story on creativity comes from what I thought to be a lack of it. I never saw myself as a very creative person because from my perspective, creativity was related to arts and music – which I have no talent at all. 

However, after reflecting for a while about the word “creativity”, a specific situation came to my mind. I was 7 or 8 years old by that time and was watching National Geographic on my grandma’s TV, when a documentary about people in Cambodia who were selling deep fried tarantulas as a delicacy went on. Those vendors were selling up to 100 pieces per day and earning their living. 

I was super impressed and my naive self of 7-8 years old was not able to understand that they were trying to survive, it was not as if they were living their best life. From my perspective, that was the best business ever, as one individual could simply find spiders, fry them and sell on the streets. 

My grandma always mentions about that particular story. She says it was visible how happy I was about this finding. When the documentary finished, I immediately grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and started making a whole calculation, considering how many spiders I would have to sell per day to have a great life. From this moment onwards I have had the dream of going to Cambodia, which unfortunately I was not able to fulfill yet.

Thinking about this event after many years allows me to have a new point of view about my creativity. I AM a creative person, although I have always used this creativity to find new work solutions and ideas to evolve on my career and grow as an individual.

I must say that until these days grandma keeps that piece of paper with my calculation, and I really hope to visit Cambodia and try the deep fried tarantulas, as they represent my first memory about using my creativity to plan my life.