A Little Bit of Self Reflection

I've been doing a lot of finding out who I am lately. In my knitting, my dancing, and my general creativeness.

It's interesting, how I still feel like the same person creativity-wise as I was in highschool, however I feel like I was more whole as a 16 year old than I am now, as a 24 year old. Since then, I have gone to college and earned a bachelor's degree in two fields. I like them both, but that is more or less a different story. All the reader needs to know from this is that I am a "scientist". My job is to do research on complicated biology stuff than most people find "impressive", "interersting" or "challenging". People find out what I do for a living, and sudenly, that is what defines me. To them, above everything else, I am a nerdy scientist who wears goggles, a lab coat, and hides in a creepy place with my ethanol, DNA preps, cells, mice, and bunson burner. Second to this total geeked out image am I an artist to them. I am told "you think like a scientist", "you're analyzing", or "you think about things differently than artists do". Every time I hear these words, a part of me is beated down.
I view myself completely different. The exact opposite. To me above everything else, I am a sketch artist and painter who knits, and is trying to get a hang of this dancing thing. I am this creative person who is trying to support what I love doing by having a "real job" out in the big world. I still see myself as myself and my classmates saw me at 16; the weird, pierced theatre chick with big pants who was always drawing in the sketch pad in the middle of class.

Getting back in touch with old friends has somewhat woken me up. Every time I tell them what I am doing they seem stunned and shocked saying "Are you serious?! I never would have guessed you'd go into biology. I thought you were going to be an artist!" They find it hard to imagine me with a normal job, obeying a boss, and being restricted to "work" which does not lend itself well to creativity... unless you count goofing off at lunch coming up with experiments to see who can tell the difference between sugar-water and splenda-water "creative".

Earlier this week I brought my old sketch books into work to show a coworker. I hadn't looked through them since I was 19, but somehow managed to remember to cart them around with me where ever I moved to after college. It was strange. I remember exactly where I was when each picture was being drawn, when I drew it, and what I was thinking. They were all from 9 years ago. My coworker was impressed and didn't realize I had this side. It baffled me for a minute, thinking "But *everyone* KNOWS I can draw". But everyone doesn't. Nobody realizes I have these abilities, because I left everyone behind. I sold out on myself. I decided I didn't need to go to college for art because the one time I actually took an art class, I hated the instructor looking over my shoulder telling me that my picture needed more of this or that. (It's a story for another time, but my bratty teenaged self used my creativity and pictures to tell her to STFU.. which she did. and she never commented on my pictures after that) After taking that class, I decided that art instructors were stifling and limiting, killing my creativity, and dammit, I didn't need that; I was going to go to school to become a biologist.

I must have lost myself on my 18th birthday, because that is where it all changed. I stopped drawing. I stopped creating. I was stuck in books, homework, labs, and exams. And now? I feel lost. I feel like I abandoned myself somewhere between Florida and Pennsylvania, and I'm somewhat upset that it took me until THIS WEEK to realize that I'm lost. Where have I been for the past 6 years? And most importantly, how do I get myself back? How do I prove to everyone that I am more than a pipet and plasmids and really belong to my paper, pencils, and imagination?

That's the million dollar question.