50 Days 'til 50 Day 22--Talkxting

50 Days ‘Til 50Day 22TalkxtingIt took me a long time to own that I was indeed an authentic creative type. I would watch my friends who I considered to be highly creative soar at their respective genres and just be amazed that they could translate whatever it was going on inside their minds into something tangible, something creative, and beautiful. I guess at its core this is Achilles heel of all creative and noncreative types. Those feelings of having something that you are so passionate about and if you don’t get it out of you, you’ll just burst. The people who not only have a vision for something, a talent for something, but who can then carry it through to fruition. This was always the kicker for me. Like most creative types my mind would swirl with creative ideas but when it came to actually getting to that point of completion I fell apart. I just couldn’t seem to see it all the way through. Whether I cared too much what others thought, didn’t have the appropriate resources, or was just plain lazy my creative thoughts would just fizzle and disappear only to be replaced with new ones. Probably the area that this holds most true for me is with music. As far back as I can remember music has just been one of those things that speak to me on the deepest of levels. There are moments when I will just play a song over and over again just in awe that the singer/songwriter can get those words from their heads to paper, marry it to the music, and put it out there for all of us to hear. Something so powerful it seems as if it has the ability to bring this crazy ass world together, if even just for a moment.So as the years went on my path would eventually lead me into the highly creative environment as a hair and makeup artist. It took me many years before I said that proudly. I had long suffered from the fact that I didn’t go off to college like so many of my friends. My mom worked at a university, which allowed for their children to get half priced tuition. I think it was a shock to us all when I just barely scraped through my last year of high school and had made no definitive plans to attend or even try to get into college. Beauty college just didn’t have the same ring as Harvard. Luckily and divinely I did have a hidden talent for this hair business and it has brought me 30 years now of working in one of the most dynamic, challenging, and rewarding communities I could have ever imagined. As the creative mind never stops, there have been many times in my career where I started having additional interests. As the technology age sprouted up all around me I began having an interest in graphic arts. I even went to college in Miami for this although not until I was way into my 30’s. I have always felt like a late bloomer to my own life. It always seems to have taken me a bit longer to get into what the status quo may have dictated, but it takes what it takes. Better late to the party I suppose than not at all. It was amazing to be in college. Although I didn’t have the typical on-campus experience, I was at a point in my life where I wanted to learn and wanted to hear what the professors had to say. A far cry from when I was 18 and had absolutely no interest in plopping myself into 4 more years of education.As I breezed through my classes scoring an almost perfect grade point average I realized I did have a talent for this. As graphic arts touches on so many different disciplines, it was hard to focus on just one area but one thing that kept popping up for me was the use of words, text, and creative words as it pertains to graphics. I would come up with these highly creative ideas, word play, double entendres, as long as it involved text I was in. Although I don’t regret not going to college at an early age, it was becoming very apparent to me that if I had, and had been more focused; I probably would have gone into some sort of advertising. It’s all that same creative process of conception through to completion. All my projects leaned heavily into using words, creating words, and even some product ideas. I took one of them as far as I could both financially and emotionally before letting it go. I came close to getting it to market but realized it’s a full time job to accomplish this or takes an incredible stroke of luck. I sure wish they had Shark Tank back then as I would have broken the sound barrier to have stood in line for that opportunity.Even though my life would return me to the beauty industry as a business owner, I have continued to play with graphics, ideas, text, etc. This blogging project is no doubt a continuation of this outlet. My partner Jeff and I were driving home recently from a trip away and the 8-hour drive gave me lots of time to think. I was laughing at myself, as I seemed to be spending hours of that drive on my smart phone, texting friends, writing on Facebook, and emailing. I said to Jeff, “I have been texting people so much, I've convinced myself I’ve actually had a real conversation with them.” Knowing me as he does he nodded, as he can confirm what a mad texter I am. I replied back to his head nod that “I’ve been talkxting.” We both laughed and again I patted myself on the back that I had come up with another fun word, a “Josh-ism” as friends have referred to some of the words I’ve come up with. I’ve also learned over the years that its highly unusual to come up with anything original anymore. It was my biggest challenge in school to come up with something that was an original thought or idea, not plagiarized from someone else, not something that I had already seen before and just embellished it, but a truly original thought. I was convinced that this word, talkxting, was going to be the next big word of the year. I could make an app, sell it to Apple, make appearances on the Today Show and all the late night talk shows showing off my original “word of the year”. By the way last years word of the year was “Selfie” (which I did not come up with.) "Selfie" beat out seven competitors, including "twerk," "schmeat" (synthetically produced meat) and "bitcoin" for the word of the year crown. It has spawned herds of images on social media. There are 57 million photos bearing its hashtag -- #selfie -- on Instagram alone.Immediately I went to Google. For if its not on Google it isn’t so, right? As in many searches online for my so-called original ideas, that completely crushing feeling passed over me as there it was glaring back at me from the screen; “Talkxting” was already a word. Damn it. Another brilliant idea crushed. (At least I could save money on having to buy a new suit for all my TV appearances I thought.) Now the definition I found is not identical to the same way I used to define it and it hasn’t found its way to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary just yet. I found it on Urban Dictionary. That infuriating online dictionary that I swear is just a bunch of stoners, sitting around getting paid for coming up with asinine words. (Again, I'm about 20 years to late.) They have several definitions with the main one being: “An exchange of more than four text messages making it a conversation.”  I still like mine better.Ahh……sigh.jf