It doesn't take much for me to get briefly lost musing about the road not taken. This is especially true when I'm around young people involved in creative pursuits. For instance, my daughter.
When I see how effectively my daughter collaborates with her writing partner, it's easy to get wistful about early missteps in my creative life. I wonder: What if I'd been a little less invested in doing it on my own? How might my songwriting or other creative pursuits have evolved had I collaborated - even occasionally - with someone else? Although I don't get mired in these hypothetical scenarios, watching how effortlessly my daughter manages her creative life does give me pause.
Extracting value from creative collaboration goes hand-in-hand with high emotional intelligence, another of my daughter's innate strengths. Knowing that about her provides ballast for my brief wistful journey down the road not taken.
Good morning,Pat. I hope this finds you all doing well. I'm not sure I ever had any serious intentions to collaborate on anything with anyone. One time I can recall was when I first attended college and was working on a project with a classmate in a theater workshop. Unfortunately they were also involved in other projects and, not being as much of a theater person as I was/am, they paid much more attention to their other projects. One result of that has been doing most things solo. Although saying' most things' makes it sound as if it was a lot if things, which it clearly wasn't. An easier response would be to say that parenting is a collaborative effort - as I know you can attest to. And I will be forever grateful to my ex-wife for her part in this. As we navigated through our divorce we agreed that our children would always be our primary focus and primary concern. Good friends now, we share two wonderful children who have married well, have kids of their own and also great careers.
ReplyDeleteBe well,
Bob
Bob; Thanks for your comment. Great perspective re how good parenting can be the ultimate in productive collaboration. I'm proud my daughter's comment below affirms that at least I did that collaboration right, even if I missed out on some early-in-life opportunities for creative collaboration.
Deletethanks dad :) and I agree with Bob's comment, you and mom were the teammates I learned from.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the affirmation, sweetheart.
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