Imagination Needs Courage in My Corner of the World

There have been different times in my life where ideas weren’t a safe playground. I quickly learned that they could be a way to give someone a health check.

The multitude, intensity and frequency of these ideas could be analysed and resolved a sign of type-one mania.

I was lying in bed tonight, unable to sleep, thinking about ideas. I had reached over to my nightstand where several magazines rest. I’d had the inspired idea in September to start collecting different magazines to encourage a more grounded artistic version of myself - and to try learn Dutch with the Dutch Vogue I’d picked up.

When I have a new idea, my mind will go through an entire self-checklist.

“When was the last time I had a new idea?”.

“How frequently have I been rotating through my ideas?”.

“How long have I stuck with the same idea?”.

“Am I going crazy or am I just having the normal human amount of ideas?”.

“If I tell someone that I’ve had this idea, do I need to preface that I am in fact not going insane”.

Since coming away to Europe, I’ve been surrounded by beautiful art that makes me feel inspired. There’s this popular saying that has been in my mind lately that to tells me if I want everything, I must go through the discomfort. Unfortunately, I think my subconscious self likes to keep tabs on my ability to be creative, idealistic, idea-full and imaginative. At what point does it become too much? Perhaps my real catch 22 is that if I were actually becoming manic, I would probably not have the ability to stop myself by thinking my way out of it and sending myself to the asylum.

As an artist I have the odd experience of almost being ‘fearful’ of my own ability to have ideas - even though simply put, I’ve been very imaginative since I was a child.

2024 is less than two months away and it’s as though I want to find this magical certainty in who I want to be when I return home. What kind of Gracie do I want to show up as when I ‘re-enter society’. A part of me wants to protect this new side of myself that I have found, this old part of myself that I have re-kindled and in doing so I want to tread delicately and carefully.

I’m a multi-dimensional being. I find comfort, certainty, safety and a sense of stability in my ability to fit into one conventional side of myself and yet I am drawn to these other corners. Perhaps I describe myself as a documentative photographer not out of niching but out of sheer laziness. I have become a fat cat in an old plush couch that has been moulded to my fluffy ass. To those who could say, “That’s a bloody odd metaphor, Gracie”.

What it means is, for so long I’ve been working out how to make it work as a photographer that I stayed a few grades behind for a few years as I refined one particular style of photography. However, Europe challenges me.

In Europe, after flipping through a magazine, my mind has started to feel as though it’s coming alive again.

My mind is starting to think in colour and imagine doing creative shoots with friends. The thing is, because when I was growing up as a teenager, ideas were something that was a red flag for Lithium for other people in my life or could lead to a trip to the hospital for someone else.

As I give myself the space to explore myself, have I been too scared to let myself imagine too?

Perhaps I must allow myself to have more curiousity and less walls?