31 Days- Creativity in the Guitar Shop

Creativity- having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas

Not to be confused with a thinker of deep thoughts, someone who is creative can often feel burdened to move the thoughts from their head out into the world. It can end up a very public, very functional and very elegant result... or the exact opposite in one (or even all) of those areas. Success or failure is not the end result. Getting it "out there" is, at least for me.

In my experience there are a large number of people here on the planet that are creative but haven't the slightest idea they are. Maybe they've never been told they were creative or, more likely, they don't see what they do as being creative. They're just getting a job done. They believe the label creative only applies to a select few: painters, composers, authors. 

I see creative people everywhere I look. They abound in rooms full of engineers, in your local garage as well as in the trades i.e. machinists, carpenters, and plumbers. Wait, plumbers? Yes, the creative plumber exists. You see, creativity isn't about the medium you use to exercise your creativity; it's about exercising your creativity.

For example: opening a lock. The vast majority of us open a lock with a key, a security card, or a code. Some may turn to a hacksaw blade or a cutting torch. Then there are those among us who turn to using a pair of wrenches.

Now I don't know if Mr. Gear is the originator of this technique or not. It may be something passed down from generation to generation but at some point the world did not know how to do this. And this skill has now been seen by MILLIONS of people around the world. Some say this doesn't fit into the box of how they define creativity. I choose to see it differently.

Try this: have you ever looked at a situation and thought "this can be done better/easier/more efficient"? Stand back disbelievers- creative thoughts are being thunk! There is an amazing amount of creativity that goes into what we call problem solving and it can happen in front of your eyes when you least expect it.

And that gets us back to why I'm here. For the next 31 days I'm going to talk about the myriad of ways I use my creativity in conjunction with my hobby known as Rattlecan Guitar Restorations where I explore the world of stringed instrument construction, repair, and restoration. And a sneak peek into how those various creative actions come together can be seen in the home page for the Patreon partnership I launched today. So check it out and see if you can pick out where creativity was used to present a message.

Starting tomorrow the posts will generally happen in the evening as I want to present a "here's how I was creative today" journal. It won't be limited to just the guitar shop but that IS where I spend the majority of my time. So....here's to being creative!


Cheers,

James