On finding your creativity, when your industry is highly institutionalized… I’m an Orthopaedic surgeon; I fix broken bones and deformed limbs. I get to witness the amazing capacity for the body to heal and correct, when we give it a little technical help. Surgery is also a highly institutionalized profession: for patient safety, it has to be. There’s little margin for deviation. We have been trained to think a certain way, problem solve a certain way, and behave and lead in a certain way - under stressful conditions. This gets ingrained and imprinted into us over many years of training. This often comes at a price though. I often talk about how we accept people into medical school based on some absolutely incredibly creative things they have done, and then we subsequently beat the creativity out of them over the years of training.
In 2018, I went out on a ‘limb’ and wrote “Maria’s Marvelous Bones” - a kid’s book about a girl who breaks her arm and goes through the process of treatment. My goal was to take an otherwise scary event, and make it understandable and accurate for kids. The book continues to do well - it won some awards, got some great literary reviews, and is highly ranked with online book sellers. What puts me over the moon though, is when I hear stories of little kids around the world that it resonates with - like the sisters who dressed up as the book characters for book week in Australia, the American girl who calls all her stuffed animals and dolls by the name of the brother character in the book, the kids of an British orthopedic surgeon who make their dad read the book every night for weeks on end (sorry, dad!), or the Canadian grandma who says the book helped their anxious grandson approach his own fracture treatment with confidence.
If you get a inkling of an idea on how to find your creativity, run with it and see where it takes you, even if that path is not commonly travelled by the people in your industry. You can chart your own course. Your brain will expand from its regimented state, you will find joy, and it might even help someone else. https://a.co/d/9IdesFR