Creativity Flow

 

 

I am hiding from the world these days in tiny pockets of time. I am saying "no" to urgent requests for help with this and that. I am sequestered away in hopes of creating a nest where creative juices may flow.

Every once in a while I wake up bursting to create something. To experience something new. To learn something. To surround myself with something beautiful. To accomplish. Not so much for getting a gold star, or receiving much recognition, but stemming from a place inside that needs to grow. Most days these bursts of creative energy are lost in the stream of necessary things that must be done. But every once in a rare while, perhaps when the moon is full, the children are in school, and my husband is away, I can hide from the world and see if anything interesting comes to me. Sometimes words just type themselves on a page and I think "Where did that come from?" Other times my computer screen is blank for weeks on end and I can't muster up a single interesting thought. Mysterious, those creative juices. Part talent. Part circumstance. Part gift from beyond myself.

A deadline is approaching. I am supposed to be choreographing this year's Singing Christmas Tree. So, naturally, I am blogging about the experience of not choreographing instead! It would be helpful to have the pieces finished, or at least outlined before the dancers actually show up to work. So far, I've been listening, and daydreaming, and thinking, and watching other people's work. I have a few scribbles in a notebook, but not many steps actually matched to music. This is where the doubt part of the creative process creeps in. "Why did I ever agree to take this on? What if I can't deliver? What if this year is a big flop and it's mostly my fault?" These are the thoughts of September.

 

 

(Love this image from a fellow creative type, found on Pinterest)

My fifth grade son inquired about my recent late-night viewing of various dance genres. "How are you going to cite all of that?" he asked. I was happy that he was concerned about intellectual property and giving credit where credit is due. Well-done, fifth grade teachers. He's getting it. It is harder to explain to a ten-year-old boy about searching for inspiration. Our Christmas angels are inspired by Alvin Ailey and Balanchine and Irish river dancers, but our works will not be theirs. I just need to "get in the zone" of watching beautiful, creative things in order to figure out what our creativity will look like.

 

 

The problem with being a creative sort is that there is always something that you would like to learn but haven't had the chance to get around to yet: brushing up on the French you learned in high school, finally learning Spanish, picking up Irish step-dancing or flamenco, learning the art of fencing, traveling to Australia. The world is your oyster, but you still have to go to Kroger and figure out what is for dinner. Seven hungry people are waiting for you to figure this problem out, and are not as deeply concerned about the creative puzzle in front of you. You are supposed to be choreographing steps to specific songs, but your mind on creative overdrive is wondering if they have fencing classes at the local park and when the new barre studio is going to open in Columbia.

 

When not actually creating anything, I enjoy reading about creativity. Perhaps you'll find this article interesting too.

18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently:

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/04/creativity-habits_n_4859769.html

 

Lake Day with Good Friends

We count ourselves blessed to be able to share a Saturday in the company of good friends. Friends of a lifetime. Friends that we minister alongside one another. Friends that we raise our children together. Buckets of rain (lightning storms and torrential downpours) could not throw cold water on this gathering.

 

 

Porch time with soul sisters

Grilling.

Kayaking.

Swimming.

 

Processing life together.

Playing together.

Laughing.

Teasing one another (especially over the subject of the first kid of the bunch to have a girlfriend).

Lounging.

Cheering the Gamecocks as they beat Georgia.

All this togetherness is too much for the quieter ones. The introverts slink off to their personal corners and cry out "I need personal space!" I see them later crouching near electrical outlets in the dim rooms lit only by soft electronic glows, happy as clams. I wonder if intervention from professional guidance is needed, but decide to leave them be, and later are happy to see them gradually emerge from their caves of darkness to rejoin the family units and the nosy "aunties" and "uncles" of church family. We'll be there when they need us.

Weathering the storms together.

 

 

 

 

The Prodigal Hamster Returns

I think it is fair to say that any child who has experienced a beloved pet gone missing can understand the story of the Prodigal Son told in Luke 15:11-32.

Natalia's hamster went out gallivanting one evening. Alarmed and distraught, my daughter turned the place upside down looking for her pet. We prayed, looked, teased, and left the door open in hope of her return...and she did! Answered prayer is a very real thing. I love how God speaks so personally in ways that matter to us.

 

Naughty hamster gnaws through N's comforter making her own bedding

 

 

Thoughtful N leaves a trail of provisions in case the hamster should return to her senses

 

 

Leaving the light on and the door open in hope

 

Safe and sound

 

I was lost, but now I'm found

 

Testing the message "melts in your mouth, not in your hands" at midnight and 5 am.

When "Shouting it out" isn't helping the gooey red mud left on brand new baseball pants- first game was after a monsoon

 

For Jan Jan

Here it is, Janice, as recommended, a blogpost (mostly) about Andy.

Not only is our minivan middle aged, but we are middle aged, and our marriage is middle-aged. Fifteen years next month. In order to keep the wonder in front of my carpool-distracted eyes, I have decided to try to make myself a list of all the reasons I love my man...in journal-entry form...

Like a gratitude journal focused on the gift of a person.

After coaxing little-bit in youtube instructional videos on football positions, she went from "This is boring, just a bunch of guys attacking each other" to shedding tears when she didn't get to stay until the end of the game.

Our kitchen, the science lab

The goal

 

Thankful, anyway

My minivan is middle-aged. Eleven years, 150,000 miles. The air still works (and for that I am very thankful in these upper nineties days). The CD player/radio does not. We just got the door fixed, the window fixed, the horn fixed, and now we need a seatbelt replaced too. Middle-age maintenance.

Our fridge is also on the blink. The curdled milk in my morning coffee led us to recognize that it was not cooling as it should. So now, I am reminded to thank God for mornings when I have a working refrigerator, and nonspoilt cream in my decaf. When is the last time I remembered to be thankful for such small things as morning coffee, or being able to listen to a CD on the long, long carpool routes? I take so many things for granted, and am annoyed when my routine experience glitches. Perhaps I need to be annoyed a little more often to fully recognize all the gifts I've been given.

One blogger calls this reflection making a "nectar list". It's the same concept of a gratitude list. Instead of focusing on all the goals not yet attained (bucket list), it is a pausing to give thanks for all the blessings received, all the moments in life already experienced. A reminder that it's not so bad after all.

 

 

The ladies in my Sunday School class and I are doing a Beth Moore Bible Study in which we're challenged to let God love us fully, so that we can love others entrusted to us well. Yesterday was the first day of journal reflection. I counted three times (so far) that day when I had not loved so well. Flustered by a child who had wandered off to a friend's house without telling me. Annoyed by my husband's playful wrestling that left me with a crick in my neck. Flat out incensed by another child's disrespectful remark.

 

Beth teaches that some people are a joy to love...and others are a little "testier". We go back and forth between joy and testy all day. It can change in the blink of an eye. A moment of harmony savored, or sucking in my breath so that I will not explode violently all over my middle-aged minivan. My "testy" loved ones assuredly find me rather testy as well. Like the moment when I slammed on the brakes and gave squabbling children a what-for in the middle of our neighborhood for God and all the construction workers to see. I am praying for greater awareness of my own testiness, and a greater sense of relying on God to love through me when my patience has long run out.

 

Still trying to do better in the kitchen. Waiting for the joy to come after surrender. Still have some emergency peanut m&m's in my closet.

 

Ambush from the topiaries

If you look closely enough around our house, you will see signs of life in the oddest places, like these Lego battles being staged in my topiary vignette. I don't think we will ever be magazine photoshoot clean or tidy, as much as we try. Life happens here. Sand under my bare feet tracked in from someone's baseball cleats, miniscule hamster bedding particles left over from a dropped cage, chargers plugged into various outlets charging various electronic devices, memos of field trips and forms to be signed on display so that I will (try) not to forget them, the beginnings of science fair projects, apple cider vinegar traps set to lure fruit flies on the counter. Life.

When you humbly say, "Sure! look around," when the social worker comes for the two-year-post-placement visit, not quite sure what she may find lurking in the boys room since you last spot-checked it.

The kids participating in backyard ice bucket challenges to raise awareness for ALS.

Collards, stewed tomatoes, and other southern yummies that my kids won't eat - enjoying lunch and thrifting with my beautiful mom

$5 finds. I don't know what this says, but I like it. It kind of looks like a medieval illuminated letter D if you want it to. My man thinks we should have this translated before we hang it on the wall, but I don't figure that anyone else will know what it says either.

Visions of angels dancing in my head, choreography for this year's Singing Christmas Tree began in August. First Christmas presents bought and stashed in the few moments of alone shopping time when our kids are in school.

 

Daddy-daughter dates bowling. What to do when your animated eight year old starts referring to herself as M-swizzle?

Life in the carpool lane.