Friday, January 27, 2006

Creativity

In my internet wandering at the start of the year I came acros the Swirly Girl website and her project for this year 52 Figments, in which she gives a weekly prompt, and asks participants to create a postcard around that prompt. The first one for the year was "What is your theme for 2006?" After some thought I decided that I wanted 2006 to be the Year of Creativity. Not just in terms of my artsy/crafty projects (or as one friend calls it artsy-farsty), but to live my life creatively.

I don't seem to be have been too successful in that so far. I didn't blog for the last couple days because I felt I had nothing to say. Not much has changed since my post on Tuesday, the days seem to be passing by in a blur of sameness: wake-up, have coffee, waste countless hours on the internet while telling myself to GET OFF and do something productive, try to start or complete a layout or other project, stop to watch my favourite tv show at 2:00, go back to the project but end up surfing again or chatting with friends on ym, because by this time the US has woken up, oh look it's 5:30 Lucas is home, spend some QT with him, chat on internet again, have dinner and watch tv, decide it's too late to do anything cause the lighting isn't good enough on my desk, go to bed only to wake up to do the same thing all over again. Oh and in between there I do what little housework needs to be done (usually as little as possible HA!), check the mailbox etc. etc. It seems a vicious circle.

So I need to try to get back to my good intentions from less than a month ago, and try to live more creatively (or at least more interestingly). I used to read lots of books along these lines, but I don't have access to them like I used to (well there's always Amazon, really I have no excuse). Books used to be so important to me but lately I've been more caught up with buying scrap supplies. Another thing that needs to change.

This morning I pulled out "Romancing the Ordinary" by Sarah ban Breathnach and I will read my way through it again this year, and maybe this time apply some of what she wrote to my daily life (even if only the recipes). I used to own Simple Abundance, but I sold it, I have no idea why. I'll have to buy another copy again this year. I also own a copy of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and for some reason unknown to me I left it packed up with my stuff in the US, rather than ship it over with the few books I wanted to have with me immediately in France. At this point it might just be better to buy another copy of that as well.

I think I also need to remind myself that blogging is being creative. Unless I'm just writing a laundry list of "what I did today" the process of updating this blog is a creative one, and if I can do just that everyday I'm already living my dream. I think I need to understand that this goal of mine won't happen all in one go, it'll happen slowly over time, and each day I do something new or different or kooky, no matter how small, I am indeed living the way I want to live.

So what about you? What is it that you do to live creatively?

1 comment:

corinne5 said...

I blog, decorate my new scraproom, lol and redecorate the house and ofcourse scrap for myself and for others, but also draw with the kids!

corinne5xxx