Click for more photos from my Paralympic torch run

If you’re a resident of Vancouver, the Olympic phenomenon has likely been on the tip of your tongue for the past year or more. There’s been the construction, the endless street closures and newspaper headlines about everything from beefed-up security to budget overruns. For myself, as an employee for the past three years of a not-for-profit associated with the 2010 Winter Games, it’s been my focus for even longer.

All of this hoopla and angst finally culminated this past February and March in Vancouver’s Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. By the end of it all, the reviews were largely positive. Vancouver residents had had a great time. There had been this coast-to-coast outpouring of red and white patriotism. Oh, and most important of all to Canadians, our boys walked away with hockey gold.

While this was all fabulous, for me the Olympics touched a more personal chord and inspired something that had nothing to do with sport and everything to do with getting my life back on track.

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My original intention for this blog was to make it somewhat “professional” and offer insights as well as displaying successive steps to creative accomplishment. The fact that I haven’t updated in over two weeks shows exactly how inspiring that idea ultimately ended up being for me.

The truth is I have a day job where I am supposed to be professional for 45hrs a week as it is. What’s all that personally inspiring about feeling like I need to put forth a professional face after work hours as well? Particularly when the whole point is to try and light my creative kindling.

Plus I also feel that there’s a bit of a lie inherent in that professional face if the other half the intent is to provide insight on what it means to have a creative life as well as the day job. There’s this belief in our society that artists and creatives must have their acts together in order to produce great work. Leonardo never doodled in the margins. Every note that Beethoven put to the page was golden. It’s the perfectionist disease that all too often stifles all the might-have-beens… even if it’s just those seemingly regular people who might-have-been happier if they could just allow themselves to get messy and unblock their creative desires.

So I’ve changed the blog’s name to “Multimedia Alchemist” as a nod to the shift in focus. Of course I will still be talking about web design, animation, painting, writing, etc., but there will be a bit more messiness–and a bit more “me”–in here as well.