Creativity Experiments

366 Days of Building Creativity Week 38 in Review: September 16th-September 22nd

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your world need not be lost; that is where they would be. Now put the foundations under them."
-Henry David Thoreau

My 2016 Experiment of building a LEGO creation everyday seems quite tame when I read about Thoreau's two year experiment of living in the woods simply. 

"2016 Building Creativity Experimenter."

That's what my Instagram bio reads.

This week marks the last 100 days beginning.  

Significant to me because the only reason I had any trust I could do this experiment was because I had completed in 2014 & 2015 two-100 day gongs where I did something(s) every day for 100 days. 

So by the end of this year I will have done 3.66 LEGO gongs :)

I am starting to think about how this experiment has changed me. 

How has it caused me to see differently?

What I see now is we get to build our life each day, each moment. I have a choice about which brick I am going to place next. I have a choice about which bricks to remove. No matter how few or how many bricks I have, how much variety or similarity, I can make something out of them. If I choose.

As I've been creating with LEGO bricks everyday, I've also been creating the life I want to live. Slowly, steps forward and steps backward, but with intentionality and discipline. 

I can't build it all at once, but I can keep coming back to it, chipping away at it everyday, unblocking what needs to be unblocked, and building up what needs to be built. It's hard to not be able to do it all at once and I still struggle with wanting everything done, but I'm trying to find peace and acceptance and focus on what has been done.

I feel my soul is waking up. All the quotes on creativity and art are speaking to me and nourishing me. My soul is being fed. I needed this experiment, as silly and strange and uncertain as it sounded to me last December.

​Tangibly, I'm more at home, in my body, my brain, my feelings, my soul, and in my actual physical home. I am listening to them all the way I listen to the art quotes and bricks. Paying attention to what wants to come forth, and allowing it all. Noticing what needs to be changed - either removed or added, and doing so.

The foundations are being put up....
-I'm feeling my uncomfortable feelings compassionately instead of numbing them with alcohol or food.
-I'm nourishing my body with good whole foods and lots of delicious water. 
-I'm using rituals of tea, Sabbath, slowing down, and intention to help live more mindfully in the moment.
-I'm using daily journaling to help let go of negative thinking and build up new positive brain habits.
-I'm using meditation, prayer, and yoga to help me come back to my body and just being and filling it.
-I'm allowing beauty and sacred in my home by creating spaces and experiences that make me happy.
-I'm working on the foundations to share my experiment so others can experience a creative soul renewal.

Days 260-266

Day 260
"Everyone has to find their own path to follow. My path is a combination of making art, writing, and teaching. What is your magic combination? What are the activities that make you happiest? What makes you forget that time is going by?"
​-Stephanie Levy

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Day 261
"Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity, innovation, and change. It's also the birthplace of joy, faith, and connection. To create is to make something that has never existed before. There is nothing more vulnerable than that."
​-Brené Brown

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Day 262
"You are the artist of your life. You get to create in this way. It's all up to you."
​ -Alena Hennessy

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Day 263
 “I find that creating art is such a wonderful way to have that time just for yourself, just for your being, and to record your life in your own unique expressive way and to learn to love ourselves a little more and to trust our intuition.”
​–Alena Hennessy

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Day 264
“Learn from your mistakes but don’t dwell on all the ways you could have done things better. Accept that there will be a lot of highs and a lot of lows. Enjoy the days when you feel like a total bad-ass and keep moving through the days when you feel like a loser with a lame idea that will never work.”
​–Eleanor Mayrhofer

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Day 265
"Artists pull back the covering on our inner life, allowing us to see things beneath the surface, things that without their compassion, creativity, and generosity we may have missed...Art comes from honest hands shows us beauty, stirs up longing and touches is deeply."
​-Emily Freeman

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Day 266
"Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot."
​-Jeremiah 18:4