Creation.

I’m sitting in exactly the same spot where I wrote my previous blog post, and I’m staring out of the same window at the same snow touched ridge, fading in and out of view through a thin layer of cloud that never quite threatens to come any closer.

It’s a beautiful day – frigid but beautiful, the clouds accompanied by patches of azure blue sky that lend a sense of warmth and peace to the otherwise cool and turbulent landscape. Tiny flakes of snow drift slowly and aimlessly past the windows, laying to rest on a fresh coat of world-famous Utah powder.

Prior to deciding to write a new post, I had only recently closed a tab on my browser opened to LinkedIn, and had found myself scrolling slowly through my ‘network’ list – a summary of all the people I had connected with on the site. Mostly they are friends, with some old work colleagues and university associates thrown in for good measure, but they are all equally impressive in their titles. From law graduates to engineers, graphic designers to small business owners, it makes for impressive reading – and powerful motivation to pause my own work so that I might reflect on where I am right now.

It’s true – Northern Utah in mid-February is a wondrous place, and as I’ve said before, it can feel oftentimes like a bubble floating erratically on the surface of an increasingly stormy bathtub (I’ve used words to that effect at least).

Working at a ski resort here can be, as is often said, a dream come true, if one chooses not to dwell for too long on the entirety of the experience, beyond the perks of free skiing and carefree work. If one chooses to do so, the prospects of the future come increasingly into greater focus, painted in the foreground against a backdrop of eclectic and bizarre work colleagues which only encourage further uncomfortable lines of self-questioning. Indeed, the monotony of work on a beginner-slope conveyor belt – while at times busy to the point of inducing stress – is always monotonous and at times so quiet that retreating into a place of melancholic introspection is almost inevitable.

This brings me to the concept of creation – not creationism, God forbid, but the concept of creating something, anything, original through the use of the mind and imagination. Something that has hitherto been uncreated if you will. It doesn’t have to necessarily add anything at all of value, but can simply be something that, were it not for one’s direct input, would never have come into existence.

In my moments of thoughtfulness, it has come to be my own personal axiom that if my life is to have the peace, value, happiness and fulfilment that I seek then I have to be involved in the act of creation. This idea, I imagine and freely admit the possibility of, most likely began to formulate in my consciousness through the discovery of William Blake, who stated that his business was creation over the act of reasoning and comparison. Clearly this resonated strongly with me, though I know that it has only been at the core of my raison d’être for the past couple of years.

And so I write. Writing is in itself an act of creation – unless you happen to be a chronic and painstaking plagiarist (if so, what on earth are you up to?), then anything you write has not been written before – hence, creation. The idea that one’s own process of thought can be recorded in words for others to interpret at their leisure (and through their own separate mind-filters, which is of it’s own curious fascination) is mind-blowing, and is to thank for almost all of human history.

I have been involved in journalistic pursuits for a little while – albeit somewhat half-heartedly, often with a sense of reluctance that I feel ashamed to feel given the opportunities that have been given to me, even at times virtually forced on me (at least that’s how it felt at the time). Looking out the window at the rolling mountain range seemingly encircling the small town of Kimball Junction, I know that I can still pursue writing as a means of both advancing my own career and sticking to my mantra of creation being at the heart of what I want to do in my life. A huge question is what kind of content I want to be involved in – I have experienced a couple of fleeting moments in Utah so far where my passion for video games has erupted uncontrollably, and I am certainly leaning towards exploring this option further – however unlikely it may be.

Until I am in a space where I can take this idea further, however, I will continue to push unwilling children around the beginner slope, picking them up out of the snow as their underdeveloped muscles cave under the pressure of towering, uniformed and oftentimes stern-faced adults desperately urging them to shuffle their feet for reasons they refuse to elaborate on.

Living the dream.