The Creative’s Journey

Written for English Composition I at The University of Oklahoma - Professor Conrad - Spring 2023

On November 28th, 1994, I was born into a family that would soon fall apart. This would lead to an explosion of creativity in my life and placing creativity as my highest value. Within the first four years, my mother and father would show they very different views of the world. These differing views would lead to their separation and eventual divorce. Growing up with divorced parents was not common twenty years ago, at least not in my schools. By far not my worst experience ever, it comes with benefits; two birthdays, two Christmas', and diverse types of love. The distinct types of love and wildly different personalities between my dad and my mom are what led to having to think creatively and think for myself.

My dad grew up in Detroit in the '70s. He grew up tough with a single mother, moved around a few times, moved away, and started off on his own life in Colorado at seventeen. My mother grew up with an excess of physical and mental trauma. My dad was quite conservative in his views, and very steadfast in his ways. My mother was free-spirited, joyful living rent-free and with six hundred dollars a month to spend on cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and lastly food. My dad was tough love and had lofty expectations. My mother was "you can be anything you want to be", "you're perfect", and "it's just a D, you'll be fine". I loved them both equally and differently, which meant I was on my own to figure out what I valued, I had to use my creative brain to paint my own picture of what the world was all about.

My values at that early age came naturally from things I enjoyed doing. In the early years this was school, friends, and playing on my PlayStation 2. Things in my life were getting dark, and I, a carefree kid, did not notice. It is funny how looking back on events with a refined eye can change so much. As a seven-year-old kid who enjoyed nothing more than video games and friends, the idea of moving to a new school was overly exciting. Living in what felt like a mansion, making new friends, a whole new life. You would think being told to lie to the police, and say my dad tried to break into the house would have been a red flag, but not then. It was not until years later when my dad explained; he and my stepmom had spent hours every day driving around looking for me. It was not until years later that I realized my mother kidnapped me and ran off without saying a word to anyone. The memory of seeing my mom taken away in handcuffs, through the eyes of seven-year-old me was horrifyingly sad. Looking at that same memory twenty-one years later it has different meaning. Eventually the pieces of the puzzle start to fit. My worst life experiences correlate with my periods of greatest creativity. In my early years creativity was a way of coping and escaping from what was happening around me. The same year I watched my mother’s friend die from an overdose, is the same year I started drawing and painting. The amount of time I felt like a guest in my own house with my dad and stepmother, led to pursuing graphic design. For a ten-year-old kid, I was extremely good at using Adobe Photoshop. This cycle repeats itself, even now as I have grown up. In 2020, I was married to a woman with severe mental health issues. On the evening of the 7th of March that same year, I had my final phone call with her. There I was laying on a cheap couch from Walmart, there she was in Houston for work. This phone call lasted thirty-two minutes. Two minutes of words and one-thousand eight hundred seconds of silence. I was unknowingly listening to her last audible breaths as she slowly slipped away. “Mr. Tellez, I’m sorry to tell you you’re wife is no longer with us.” reverberated through the speaker of my phone making connections in my brain I hoped would never be made.  I’ve heard there are several steps to grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. What I wasn’t told is just how fluid these feelings would be, some days felt like a rollercoaster of ups and downs through each feeling. Although the primary feeling was acceptance, this was her third and final suicide attempt in a three-month time frame. That feeling of acceptance was often closely paired with guilt. The fucking guilt. What could I have done better? Could I have saved her? Could things have been different. As you will continue to see, the cycle has repeated. I dove headfirst into my safe place of creativity. One week and twelve thousand dollars later was a beautiful funeral that I poured my soul into. In my experience the feelings never truly go away, but I found ways to work with them, instead of against them. That same year I started a business selling embroidered patches and vinyl stickers all made from the comfort of my home. That is my triumph, that is my achievement each time. I have spent my entire life unknowingly redirecting all negativity into something creative. I have taken the one thing that I used to escape from life and flipped it. At this point I am constantly surrounded by projects, machines, tools, materials, my life revolves around doing creative things.

Diving deeper into this value for all things creative and looking at how it has shaped who I am, has been very eye opening. Creativity has made its mark on every facet of my life. The setting of my earliest memory is my mother’s house in 2007. This house was huge for someone who made no money. It was paid for by the state as low-income housing. This house was wonderful, the outside was a shade lighter than the petals of a sunflower. The windows had a dirt speckled white trim. The interior was old and worn, the kitchen had black and white tiled linoleum floors. The cabinets and fridge were bare. Two options for dinner at this fine establishment; a sandwich with bologna and ranch, or instant noodles. The same two options as every other meal of the day, every single day. I was tired of eating the same crap every day. I wanted new flavors, new senses, and most of all I wanted to escape from this mediocre life for just a little while. I found a can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans and fried them up in a pan with some oil and seasoning. Nothing worthy of Iron Chef, but during thirty minutes of trial and error, I forgot about every other issue I had. My parents were not divorced. My mother did not drink all the time. I felt like a kid for real. I was free from all the weight holding me down. Without realizing it, this moment changed me forever. It became the equivalent of a drug addict chasing another hit. As I grew, so did my passion for creativity and individuality. I had to customize everything I owned from something as simple as my desktop wallpaper, to painting my game consoles, I exploded with creativity. Eventually it evolved into the idea of learning every skill I needed to do things my own way. I did not want to rely on others to do something I could. I gave myself a tattoo in high school, I designed my own posters for my bedroom, everything I could do, I wanted to do my own way. However, on the 23rd of September 2013 I was no longer able to do things my own way. Eight weeks of basic training, two months of combat and water survival, six months of technical skill training and was now a qualified Airborne Surveillance Technician. The military has evolved a lot of the years but when you are brand new, it is not very friendly towards the idea of doing things your own way. Initially I felt as if I was my brain was wearing a straight jacket, I felt claustrophobic as if I didn’t have the ability to do things on my own any longer. This did not mesh well with my values, and I made it my goal to become the best at my job, to rise to a position where I could think creatively again. Instead of creating art, I now wanted to create change. Changing processes, changing thoughts and ideas, changing tactics, I wanted to use my creativity to bring positivity to others.

My time in the Air Force was the second evolution of my value of creativity. I discovered that creativity is not just pen and paper, paint and brush, creativity has many forms outside of arts and crafts. Instead of using my hands and doing creativity, I had to use my mind and think creativity. I had a rough first few years trying to find where I belonged in this three-hundred thousand piece puzzle. In 2017 I was certified as an instructor. Holy shit, I finally made it. In the Air Force air crew community, this means you are certified to teach in a classroom and in the air, teaching people how to do the job. From here I was able to take my passion for doing things in creative ways, and my love for thinking creatively, and passing that on to others. I was finally able to give back to my community, to pass the lessons and ideas I learned, to the next generation. This point is where I truly bloomed. I was unstoppable. I took this idea of creatively thinking and worked my way to the top. I was awarded "Enlisted Instructor of the Quarter", and eventually "Operator of the Year", which meant I was the best at my job out off hundreds of people on the base. My creative instruction led to better jobs across the base, with my final position being "Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Weapons and Tactics". This is just a fancy way of saying I was the go-to person for information on any aircraft across the Air Force, as well as the sole individual responsible for all tactics and training received across my career field. Now instead of teaching how to think creatively, I was authoring papers, publications, technical orders, checklists and other important documents. These documents changed the way the entire job operated. I had the opportunity to author a paper that changed the way the entire Department of Defense used a communication system. I was the "Tip of the Spear", I was at the peak of my career. It still was not enough.

It still was not enough, and that is why I am here. If I could tell twelve-year-old me, who is cooking some beans in a pan, that at twenty-eight years old, I have had the life experiences I have had. If I could tell him the things I have seen, the opportunities I have had. It would blow his damn mind. I could have never guessed at twenty-eight I would leave the Air Force and start college. Just like every other major event I have had, it revolves around creativity. I told my friends, coworkers, family members, and even strangers; "I'll keep doing this job as long as I love it". After nine years, I no longer loved it. I thought getting to the top would be the pinnacle of joy. I realized that even at the top, there was no longer room for change. In the next few years, the job I had will no longer be a part of the Air Force. The airplane I flew on is retiring. Every option I had led to restarting, either in a different job in the military, or getting out and going to school. I knew that I wanted to work creatively, and I knew my options looked significantly better in the civilian world. Overall, creativity has had an impact on every facet of my life. It has either been pulling me away from something negative, or the driving force, pushing me to do something new.