Left & Right brain image for Missouri Institute of Natural Sciences

The text for the left brain reads:

“I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.”

And for the right brain:

“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”

I found this on Facebook a little bit ago and just really fell in love with it. The visual that is.

Seven years ago, I didn’t consider myself creative. Sure, I’d played the piano since I was 5, the violin at 7, the dulcimer at 8, the clarinet at 12, the oboe at 13 and the xylophone by 14.

That didn’t make me creative.

That made me able to play instruments.

In fact, when my piano teacher once told me to ‘write out any music that comes to me – at any time of day’ I couldn’t do it. Music doesn’t come to me that way.

I can, however, read the notes on the lines like reading a book and my brain translates those little symbols like letters straight to my fingers. I can often play a piece of music by reading it straight from the page the very first time.

I see it. I process. I read it.

But I’m not creative.

Then one day, I got pregnant. After having my girls, I started taking pictures. You know, like all moms do. It’s the natural path for a mom. Kid requires camera. Camera requires mom. Mom takes pics of kids. Natural order of ‘things’.

Apparently, natural order and I don’t always mix because I went to the next level (as so many MWAC’s do : MWAC = Mom with a Camera) and studied, learned, tested, practiced, learned more and built myself up to professional photographer, taking photos of people, pets and weddings and events.

Yup, I did. Still do, just not as much because of a variety of factors. I do, however, now also write fiction (as you know if you’ve ever been on this blog before).

The question that comes to my mind is “How is this possible?”

How does a woman with a math degree and an MBA go from corporate america to photography to writing romance? Is it the natural order/progression of life? I think not! Otherwise, everyone would write and no one would just be a reader.

Even I have to carefully consider this. Many moons ago, I took the GMAT and GRE for graduate school. At that time, the GRE has three sections. English. Math. Logic. I scored 1 point less than  perfect score on the logic.

Why? I’m left brained.

Then how can I be a professional photographer and writer if that’s NOT the left-brained side?

For me, I have to look back … all the way to when I was 5 and started playing the piano by placing little tiny kid fingers on white and black keys. Was that the start? Maybe.

Music may require talent but it also requires a LOT of logic.

Those notes are like sound-based written words. They tell a story and to produce that story, one must not only learn which little symbol goes where on the keyboard or instrument, but how to play it.

The depression of the pedals at the same time. The strength with which fingers hit the keys. Speed. Tone. Action. Reaction. And the time it takes to go from beginning to end.

Did you read the above sentence, speed up in the middle and slow down again at the end?

That’s music. That’s writing. That’s taking logic and marrying it with creativity to produce something that is more than just a pattern of words on the paper or a string of notes that have no meaning, or even an image of a baby that calls to its mother.

What’s all this mean? I don’t think we ‘are’ or ‘are not’ creative. I don’t think we work exclusively left-brained or right. I think many cross over, they just haven’t found the spark that tells the left to talk to the right. That mixes logic with unbridled passion for silliness.

Personally, I believe that when you find it … that’s when you find fulfillment.

I know I have.

So … left-brained or right? Are have you found your middle?

Share in the comments!

—–