Creativity

Thank you for your kind comments! I am so happy that you have found the site.

So– I cannot pick just three of you, not even at random– because I would love to have you all along for the journey.

So, Sarah, Sherry, Shirl, Spadazzle, Mariah, Leanne, Kelly, Cindy, Megan– you’ll each be getting an email from me mid-week with the website and password for access to the entries. (If anyone commented on another entry and meant to be included in the giveaway–Janie? Cheyenne?, write or leave another comment, I’ll be sure to include you too!)

Mariah- no worries, you can do this at any time. Just stop in during the week and grab the content that interests you since I will be taking it down the following weekend.

And to all of you, remember– this is going to be a gentle, casual exploration– honestly.

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Tonight as the sun was setting and the flowers looked like they were glowing the garden, I sat outside and thought about creativity and what it means to be creative. I think many folks may think they are not creative because they are not artists in a form they recognize as familiar or legitimate, and we al have a tendency to discount what we do. Some just “dabble”, others do crafts, others make wonderful food or funky homes, others do not create forms and structures or even words, but they play with ideas and within their own imaginations, and somehow this does not seem to count.

I am here to say it counts.  We are all creative. We are creating this life we have, with each breath, with each choice we make, with each dream we have.

It is not easy to know this, to feel this, to believe this. There is self doubt, a very efficient form of preemptive sabotage–and I am sure it is familiar,  it goes something like this:

why bother to paint, I’ll never be any good!

why bother to take photographs, they never come out like I want anyway.*

why bother writing, I’ll never be as good as Melville (or Woolf, or  Angelou)…

as if all the good words have already been taken.

as if all the images that needed to be painted or captured are already out there, or maybe it is the belief that someone else could do it better,  or…

But, as I was so sweetly reminded by my kind and generous sister, what you do in your own voice? That has never been done before. What you see? it has never been seen in quite that way. What you create? You are creating it. It is not the same as anyone else’s.

So, I just want to say to all of us who fence (or wrestlemania) with self doubt: Do it anyway.

Write it anyway. Paint it. Dance it. Play it. Make the bread. Stick your hands in the dirt. Read out loud to someone you love. In each moment what You create matters more than you can possibly know. It matters to the world, but it also matters to ourselves. We are saying we are worthy by taking the time to focus on and acknowledge our acts of creation.

*Image was a shitty photograph (see? self doubt) I took long ago, but kept it since I loved the chair: An improbable yellow easy chair by a stream in the woods in the snow. Today, in photoshop, I made it into something I like.

And the snow? A dreamy reminder of what’s possible.