The Most Important Element in Creative Work

Kate walks on the beach in front of me, her father to her right.

I don’t know what, exactly, I am looking for. Something, anything, which shows they share a gene pool— a 6th toe maybe? A flair on the right pinky which had been passed down through generations of Thompson feet?

Flesh squished into sand as the ocean splashed up on our ankles.

With each step, I became more and more disappointed. Their footprints looked the same.

In fact, all of our footprints looked the same.

It is this upsetting same-ness which I have been fighting lately.

I wake up and there is water and then there is walking the dog and then there is pulling the dog away from someone’s old food. I get back to the house and there is coffee and then some work and then Kate is awake and it’s time to make her tea. Inevitably we do some chores for the day and work on a house which is somehow always in need of work and then probably do some laundry which is always in need of watching. Then there is food and then there is bed.

Movies and books aren’t making it better.

Protagonists are predictably tragic, then triumphant. Antagonists are evil until they are misunderstood. Monsters aren’t different or more scary, just bigger. Boy meets…