About halfway through, I wrote down the question, “What inspires you to create?” And as I began thinking of my own answer, tears filled my eyes and started streaming down my face. Tears of joy, tears of loss/grief, and tears of pride. Those tears came because of one of the women who have inspired my creativeness more than anyone else (besides my wife and mom) was my grandmother who I had recently lost.
On my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary, my sister helped my grandma do something unique and make a ‘reverse present’ for all of her grandchildren, and that reverse gift was a book with each of our pictures and the word that came to mind first when my grandmother thought of us. For instance one cousin had something like the word “strong”, another “caring”, and another “determined”, but for me it wasn’t what I expected. For me, she chose the word, “Dreamer”.
Being younger, dumber, and much more immature, I am ashamed to say that I was kind of hurt, pride stung, and annoyed by that word. In my mind being a dreamer meant things like flaky, crazy, erratic, and unpractical, so I rejected it and pushed it away, into the deepest recesses of my mind. After this I began to throw myself into projects and worked hard to change the word she thought of when she thought of me.
Then in 2013 on a cold January evening in the midst of a massive winter storm she passed on. She was gone before I ever got the chance/courage to find out if I had changed what my interpretation was of what she thought of me. I know she loved me, but I wondered at the time if she was truly proud of the man I had become.
In the weeks following her death and funeral, I was thinking of her (as I still do to this day) and the word she thought of when she thought of me came back to me. At the time, I was working as a security officer doing a grave shift on another cold wintery evening similar to the night when I lost her. That night I was wading my way through the two feet of fresh snow, in the middle of a dark field, with nothing to do but trying to stay warm, monitor the property I was guarding, and think; my mind was allowed to wander, imagine, and reminisce on ideas and tidbits of information that I had collected and stored away.
As my mind wandered, a sense of clarity settled upon me. Deep down I knew all along that there was no harm, or malice meant from her, but my interpretation of what she thought of me was flawed. That wonderful woman had known me for my entire life, and loved me as only a grandma could, had silently observed me playing with legos and other games, imagining up fantastic stories, and pretending I was a power ranger running around her backyard kicking trees. She watched that and everything else about me over the first 2 and a half decades of my life and obviously knew me much deeper than i knew myself or could ever try to know myself. What she saw in me was a spark of creativity which if fanned properly had the chance to burst into the flames of life, new realities, and if cultivated a true chance to leave an impact on the world.
Once that clarity washed over me, I found a new determination to embrace the imaginative, creative, goofy dreamer in me. Embrace the side of me that my grandmother knew so well, but I couldn’t recognize as the strength and positive character trait that it was. Since then I have done my best to jump head long into ideas when they come to me, embrace them, dream up every possibility that can come from them, and allow myself to be inspired from what I find and come up with.
Using that determination I have dreamt up multiple fantastical stories, worlds, and characters. I’m in the process of writing a fantasy series inspired heavily upon Norse/Viking culture & traditions. Also from this embracing of the whimsical dreamer my grandmother saw in me I have been able to formulate, design, build, and create multiple board games, the first of which is in its play testing phase right now.
Also because of the embracing of the whimsical, I am working on starting this publishing company/site. To go with this company, I am hoping to start a blog, a podcast, and a YouTube channel all centered around the subjects that I’m passionate about and have enjoyed for my entire life: writing, gaming, and creating.
I have embraced the dreamer, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life, because of a special woman who saw in me something that i didn’t see in myself, but cared enough to share it and let me figure out what it meant to me.
~ Russell