Grown-up creative lessons from kids and halloween

Before kids, long commutes, squeezing in podcast workshops on weekends, and our 40's, Laura and I used to go full jack-o-lantern for Halloween: we'd coordinate group costumes for our friends' party. Famous works of art, colors of the rainbow, you name it! Individually (and together), we won prizes at office costume contests. You should've seen us as matching mirrored mp3 players in the pre-iPod days! 

But now? I can hardly muster the energy to email the neighbors asking if anyone has a spare Hogwarts getup for Mattéa. All the gauze spiderwebs, styrofoam grave sites, orange lights, and Goliath-size yard skeletons roundabout leave my flame of inspiration unlit.

As an alleged “creative person,” I feel guilty about my lack of pumpkin spice spirit. Why do I have so much fun helping podcasters uncover the stories inside them, but so little magic for helping my kids bring their Halloween dreams to life?

But I'm trying to write my way out, so here it is: Halloween and scriptwriting both require imagination, both require getting out of ourselves, both require assembling something for others. A great costume and a great narrative podcast both build that bridge of recognition: we both want to sense that “A-ha!” of our audience getting it.

So next Halloween, let’s all dress up! Because there’s another analogy here, which is that there will always be reasons to not to put ourselves out there, excuses not to put on the costume of creativity. To adapt the famous Picasso quote to this week, “All children are artists. The trick is how to remain artists once we grow up.”