As a kid, I was intensely creative. My imagination would run wild. I'd channel it into everything from writing to drawing to theater. I was a voracious reader (still am) and the more I consumed, the more I created. I loved stories. I loved being told them and I loved to tell them. My sleeping mind would dream vividly and my waking mind would race with images and words which I was rarely disciplined enough to control or harness into anything tangible in the long-term. And there is possibly a reason for this.

My mother loved to foster my creativity. As a young kid, my mom stayed at home with my sister and I. And she would spend time with us helping us to channel our energy into coloring and journaling and reading. She taught me languages before I even reached grade school. French took. Arabic was a bit more complicated (spoken - great, written - lots of crying and frustration).

My father allowed me to harness creativity early on and even later in my early adulthood in fewer ways, but when it came time to start thinking seriously about my future he actively sought to shut it down every time I tried to pursue it. He would worry my mother was doing too much to nurture my dreams and to provide me with hope for a future in the humanities or arts.

My father was more pragmatic. He had a rough upbringing, having grown up quite poor in Egypt. He never told me directly (he never talked about his childhood) but my mother knew this from his siblings and family. A civil engineer by training, he was highly analytical and wanted to use a practical and vocational education to climb out of poverty and seek opportunity away from Egypt, where there was little available for someone of his background (and from any background for that matter). In this way, he was successful.

But the story isn't quite that simple. My father was also extremely creative. He was an art photographer, a furniture maker, and a home renovator/handyman. In my early childhood, we had a darkroom at home. The photos he took of my mother, sister, and I are perhaps some of the most stunning family photos I've ever seen. He saw it as an outlet and when he had any spare time, he would try to pursue his creativity.

As I entered my teenage years, his creativity started to wane and with it mine. I was still very active in music and theater, but writing and reading had fallen away as I pursued a social life. Theater was my primary creative outlet. And I was quite good at it, starring in almost every play I was in, in a public school district known nationally for its arts programs. And therein lied the problem.

My father expressed criticism of my creative pursuits and was worried about where I was headed. He knew I was talented, resilient, and obsessive with my creativity. And with the criticism came the unwavering desire to "steer" us down the right path. He knew that creativity was important as an outlet, but he also believed that it should ever only remain an outlet and only a minor distraction from the grander pursuit of survival and perhaps wealth. He wanted both my sister and I to stand on our own two feet. And while he very directly explained to us that he would never support us financially if we decided to pursue something creative (I don't believe this to be true), it scared us enough to not go down the creative path. Even though I was sure I could be successful, because I was both creative and rationally-minded, this belief in myself did nothing to address my own fear of failing, which, like most kids of immigrant parents, is something I lived with from a young age. The overt lack of support, even if untrue, was enough to instill doubt in my own abilities.

As an adult, I've sought out creative outlets and have done much to nurture them. In doing so, I've learned that perhaps not pursuing creativity as a career allowed me to tap deeper into creativity without the looming fear of failure and without money being a motivating factor, a measure of success, or a means of survival. Paying for my artistic pursuits with my day job allows me to take more risks and to be bolder in my engagements with my creative mind, because I do it purely out of passion and a need to express myself. I may not have the peak creative mind or the energy I might've had in my 20s, but I am uninhibited in other ways. I have nothing to prove to anyone and that opens my mind up to a world I might not have had access to...

Or perhaps this is just what I tell myself to feel better for not having pursued those dreams.

As a kid, I was intensely creative. My imagination would run wild. I'd channel it into everything from writing to drawing to theater. I was a voracious reader (still am) and the more I consumed, the more I created. I loved stories. I loved being told them and I loved to tell them. My sleeping mind would dream vividly and my waking mind would race with images and words which I was rarely disciplined enough to control or harness into anything tangible in the long-term. And there is possibly a reason for this.

My mother loved to foster my creativity. As a young kid, my mom stayed at home with my sister and I. And she would spend time with us helping us to channel our energy into coloring and journaling and reading. She taught me languages before I even reached grade school. French took. Arabic was a bit more complicated (spoken - great, written - lots of crying and frustration).

My father allowed me to harness creativity early on and even later in my early adulthood in fewer ways, but when it came time to start thinking seriously about my future he actively sought to shut it down every time I tried to pursue it. He would worry my mother was doing too much to nurture my dreams and to provide me with hope for a future in the humanities or arts.

My father was more pragmatic. He had a rough upbringing, having grown up quite poor in Egypt. He never told me directly (he never talked about his childhood) but my mother knew this from his siblings and family. A civil engineer by training, he was highly analytical and wanted to use a practical and vocational education to climb out of poverty and seek opportunity away from Egypt, where there was little available for someone of his background (and from any background for that matter). In this way, he was successful.

But the story isn't quite that simple. My father was also extremely creative. He was an art photographer, a furniture maker, and a home renovator/handyman. In my early childhood, we had a darkroom at home. The photos he took of my mother, sister, and I are perhaps some of the most stunning family photos I've ever seen. He saw it as an outlet and when he had any spare time, he would try to pursue his creativity.

As I entered my teenage years, his creativity started to wane and with it mine. I was still very active in music and theater, but writing and reading had fallen away as I pursued a social life. Theater was my primary creative outlet. And I was quite good at it, starring in almost every play I was in, in a public school district known nationally for its arts programs. And therein lied the problem.

My father expressed criticism of my creative pursuits and was worried about where I was headed. He knew I was talented, resilient, and obsessive with my creativity. And with the criticism came the unwavering desire to "steer" us down the right path. He knew that creativity was important as an outlet, but he also believed that it should ever only remain an outlet and only a minor distraction from the grander pursuit of survival and perhaps wealth. He wanted both my sister and I to stand on our own two feet. And while he very directly explained to us that he would never support us financially if we decided to pursue something creative (I don't believe this to be true), it scared us enough to not go down the creative path. Even though I was sure I could be successful, because I was both creative and rationally-minded, this belief in myself did nothing to address my own fear of failing, which, like most kids of immigrant parents, is something I lived with from a young age. The overt lack of support, even if untrue, was enough to instill doubt in my own abilities.

As an adult, I've sought out creative outlets and have done much to nurture them. In doing so, I've learned that perhaps not pursuing creativity as a career allowed me to tap deeper into creativity without the looming fear of failure and without money being a motivating factor, a measure of success, or a means of survival. Paying for my artistic pursuits with my day job allows me to take more risks and to be bolder in my engagements with my creative mind, because I do it purely out of passion and a need to express myself. I may not have the peak creative mind or the energy I might've had in my 20s, but I am uninhibited in other ways. I have nothing to prove to anyone and that opens my mind up to a world I might not have had access to...

Or perhaps this is just what I tell myself to feel better for not having pursued those dreams.