I’m a pretty organized person. In fact, I joke with one of my pastors (who is an organizational freak) that I’m like having a worship pastor and administrator in one so I should be paid for both (it didn’t work). I do have an assistant, but I still handle all my own appointments, meetings, worship schedules, travel, emails, etc. And though I’m not as OCD as my pastor friend (I sometimes go into his office and place his decorations on their side to torment him), I’m pretty organized for a creative type.

The thing is when I get into the real right-brained stuff I find myself in a bind. The creative process is messy. But I hate messy! So I mandated to myself that all my potential song lyrics would go ONLY in one certain notebook and be outlined by date…no more of this writing on napkins or pieces of unopened mail. But I found that as I tried to organize my creative side, my creative side died. Things became mechanical and too structured. I stopped creating. When I was a kid (and really messy), I created all the time. I built with Lego products (and ate them too, apparently). I used to draw on the walls of the house (drove my parents crazy). I wanted to be a comic-book artist (my mom said that was demonic so that got shut down, haha) but I still won lots of art awards in high school. But now my keyboard stays covered, my guitar stays in my case, and I rigidly follow my day-planner and to-do list going from meeting to meeting, task to task.

Maybe I need to grow my hair out, not shower, and not clean the house so I can create again?? But it would drive me crazy (not to mention the wife). And when it comes to the church in general, it seems they want the product of the creative but don’t want anything to do with the process of the creative. Tough situation. Does anyone out there else share this cursed hybrid personality of being an organized creative?? Help!