Creativity Takes Action

366 Days of Creativity Week 23 in Review: June 3rd - June 9th

I've had a lot of quotes recently about not waiting for inspiration. 

This is true. I've said before sometimes I have an idea of what to build after reading the art quote, but most of the time I just start building and then an idea will come. Then I rework the creation.

I've discovered recently in life that knowing how inspiration and creativity work together has been very helpful.

In the past, I would get upset when I would do something, only later to not like it or it not work out.  Or move something (i.e. a large bookshelf filled with books) and then decide it really would fit better in a different location. 

Artist Alena Hennessy really captured and helped me feel better with her statement, "Sometimes by doing something you realize what it really needs to be."

That's just what happened recently. I was trying to salvage two terrariums I had spent time and money on, but could not keep the succulents alive (and they are supposed to be the easiest of plants)! I decided the lone succulent left might look best with sand around it. So I poured in the sand and just as I did, I realized this sand is perfect in the other terrarium. 

Here's where in the past I would have been mad. I would have beat myself up for not thinking of that earlier before I poured sand in, and it would now be quite difficult and messy to switch it out to the other one.

But now, I realize that's how creativity works. You have to try things out, you can't just sit there and think you will be inspired with the perfect solution.

Another recent perspective find from author Rebecca Pacheco that captures this is, "Any writer can attest that the amount of bad writing required to unearth good writing can be exhausting."

​So I didn't get mad, I just got excited I had finally figured out what I wanted. I moved the sand to the other terrarium and added sea shells that won't die on me. Then I cleaned out the sandy one and let the last slowly dying succulent go and did as the cashier had suggested when I bought the terrarium - put a candle in it so it would reflect light all over. And I'm so happy now.

The succulents are gone but at least I still have spots of beauty and inspiration and reflection, which was the whole point.

So when you find yourselves wishing you had thought of a solution 10 times ago, know that's a part of the process. You never would have gotten to F if you hadn't gone through A, B, C, D, & E.

We have to try things out and do the the work, sometimes we have to do it many times, until we get where we want to be. And most likely, E will be fabulous for a while, until we change and things change and then we go to F :)

​Nothing is a waste. Everything is inspiration.

Happy playing and building your creative life!

The final products (for now) that I am very happy with.
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Please follow along :) 

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Creations 155 - 161

Day 155
"Fear doesn't go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day."
​Steven Pressfield

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Day 156
"We're relational creatures and I don't think those connections are made exclusively with people. Artists create things that point is to beauty, to truth, to God."
​Katherine Reay

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Day 157
"Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working."
​Henri Matisse

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Day 158
"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up & get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you."
​Chuck Close

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Day 159
"This wisdom brings me back to center. And back to the truth that my imagining the things I want to release, the things I want to birth, the people I want to surround myself with, the life I want to live, is a part of a bigger vision that is being held and nurtured by something deeper, more profound, and more beautiful than any mystery I can begin to unravel. But it starts with my imagining it, and having a little faith. And then the magic begins."
​ Kelly Rae Roberts

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Day 160
"When you travel, you experience in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak. So you are like a child just out of the womb...since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them, and you feel happy to be alive."
​Paulo Coelho 

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Day 161
"'You seem so confident Joni.' If they only knew the times I'm scared stiff to sit in front of a blank canvas with a paintbrush."
​Joni Eareckson Tada