Watching Creativity Blossom...

Oddly enough, today’s adventure in Creativity wasn’t really about me.  For the first time in three weeks, I had the luxury of walking up without an alarm clock or a full schedule.  There was no company coming for a holiday meal, no needlework classes to teach and my only commitment today was to make sure that Bethany got home from the sleep-over and over to another party at supper time. I felt almost giddy at the freedom, despite the grey, cold rain outside.

Erin is in the midst of volleyball season and her first high school midterms are approaching rapidly.  Her music teacher assigned a huge project due this coming week as a group project and Erin found out Thursday that her partner had to leave for Ontario to attend a family funeral.  Yesterday, she was handed a few sheets of information and the burden of assembling it was left on her shoulders.

There’s something amazing about being a parent when your kids suddenly show you that they’ve actually listened to you and learned from you over the years.  Instead of just typing up the usual report or putting together a Power Point presentation, Erin decided to play with some of the fluorescent card stock I have in the office.  Since their musical assignment was 1960 - 1964, Erin is assembling the information on various 60s coloured sheets which she will then punch holes in and lace together to create a type of accordion book display.  She did one of these in Grade 4 for a project on beavers and remembered how much fun it had been to plan and assemble.

Instead of freaking out, getting angry or avoiding the task, she chose to dive in and have some fun with the task.

Creativity wins out over complaining any day.  How cool is it to learn from your kids?

INHALE:  There are tasks in our life that we find difficult or may not enjoy.  There are also things we need to do that will be a lot of work.  Yet, every task also offers the chance to be creative and have some fun with it if we just look at things from a slightly different angle.  Taking that moment to think “outside the box” is what produces such creative results... projects, tasks or presentations that will jump out from the others because they take an unexpected approach.  Creativity is also fun and when you are having fun with something, even if it is a lot of work, it shows in the final results.

EXHALE:  Is there anything that you’ve been putting off?  Avoiding because it  seems like too big a project?  Is there a task you need to do where you’ve been tempted to do the bare minimum or find the quickest way to get it done instead of a creative one?  Think about whether or not you could approach this challenge from another angle that would make getting the job done more interesting or more enjoyable.  If you don’t have a big job to tackle, start with something smaller. We bought a set of new glasses today since our tall tumblers were down to 4 glasses from a mishmash of different sets.  Though I was tempted to hang on to my favourite one, it made more sense to get rid of the others and have a set of 12 that matched.