I FORGOT...

The thing about taking on an ambitious project and doing it in front of the world is that when you fail, you fail spectacularly.  It sometimes makes picking up the pieces more difficult.

Just over 9 months ago, I began what I thought would be a fairly simple adventure... take one year of my life to explore how to add more creativity to each day...a 365 day adventure.

The funny thing about thinking of each day as including an INHALE and EXHALE activity was that somewhere along the line as our lives got more and more stressful, I wasn’t just gasping for air, I literally forgot how to breathe.

Stress makes you do funny things. 

I would wake gasping from a dream of being smothered with my heart racing and then be unable to get back to sleep.

I found myself getting lost in simple, mindless things like watching odd TV shows or playing Farmville on Facebook after a long day of substitute teaching instead of picking up a pencil to sketch or a needle to stitch.

So to those who were waiting for me to offer some guidance along the way in this adventure, I apologize for the huge gap in this blog.

I didn’t even journal through this stretch of darkness, which is really odd for me.  It was as if I wanted to have no proof of this dark time and my black thoughts anywhere.

While I went out and smiled when I was teaching, meeting with clients or doing Zoomba classes, at home I curled up, hid and just tried to keep my lungs working, even as my mother-in-law had to have a whole section of hers removed. Nick and I were each trying to comfort the other when we didn’t feel strong ourselves, hoping to keep things as normal as possible for the kids.  I am sure they saw through some of our cracks.

After a very long stretch, almost 15 weeks, my mother-in-law is home from the hospital, weak but on the mend.  Nick is wrapping up a school year that is ending with chaos and uncertainty as his school gets downsized to move students to a new school as boundaries get redrawn.  The girls are ending up their year on a high note with Erin earning a spot on Team NB for volleyball, the elite provincial team along with an academic award for Grade 9.  Bethany’s awards ceremony is this week and she is hopeful about her marks earning her some recognition as well.

As for me, I have spent enough time in the quiet to realize that INHALING CREATIVITY could never be a single year’s adventure.  It is going to take me quite a few years to put together a daily creativity adventure to follow or share.  I am starting to feel as if this is not just something to try for a year, but rather a way to live and keep breathing on a daily basis for the rest of my life.

Through all this chaos, I still found myself doodling, rummaging for wool, staring at floor tile patterns or looking for shapes in clouds.  I even found heart shapes in watermelons and bits of discarded plastic.

Maybe this isn’t anything I can turn off.  

Maybe choosing Inhalations and Exhalations was the right image after all.

It’s time to take a deep breath and begin again.

Join me tomorrow for the first new breath of this adventure.

Facing Fears Creatively...

Sometimes in life there are things that scare us. What is easy for one person might be incredibly difficult for another. Ask me to draw a dinosaur roller-skating and I can do it in a flash. Ask me to speak in public to a crowd of 500? Bring it on! Ask me to do a quadratic equation or drive in a foreign country in someone else’s car... well that’s when my palms get a little sweaty.


I guess because my husband, Nick, is such a good driver and honestly loves to drive any type of car in almost any situation, I seldom drive on long trips in our van. That is PRIME knitting, staring at scenery or daydreaming time!


Being in Geneva, Switzerland this week to help out with my niece and nephew while my brother is away and my sister-in-law handles some major conference calls and then leaves on her own trip meant I was going to have to drive them to and from school each day as well as get them to their various weekly activities. In theory, that sounded a lot less scary than Sunday night and yesterday morning when Anne showed me the various routes I’d need to take. I tried not to panic on the outside as much as I was doing on the inside...


So what do you do when that cold grip of fear starts to take hold? Face your fears and think creatively!

INHALE When Fear strikes or there is something you need to do that will be difficult, the best thing to do is tackle it as soon as possible. Facing fear head on and attacking the problem is much better than ignoring it and hoping it will just go away. Bait is also very good. Once the rush hour traffic was over, I took Anne’s car out on the roads and traced the route I’d have to follow to pick them up later in the day. After that, I even went to the main department store in their area which had underground parking just a bit taller than I am. I was almost giddy with satisfaction once I parked the car and stepped into the store... so of course I rewarded myself with a new type of chocolate bar to try. Since losing my extra weight about 8 years ago and keeping it off, I try not to use food as a reward very often... but I am in a country where really EXCELLENT chocolate takes up almost a full grocery aisle! Need I say more?

EXHALE Find something in your life that you find difficult to do but that needs to be done. Spend 15 minutes and map out a road plan, write a list or brainstorm doodle ways to break that scary task down into some smaller steps. Martha Beck calls them Turtle Steps. Someone else once said “Just eat the elephant one bite at a time.” Taking the first step towards change can often be the hardest part. By thinking more creatively, you may find interesting solutions to challenges that have stumped you up until now. Plus, don’t forget to find some good bait!

When Someone Else Can Say It Better..

I’ve been struggling with how to post the scattered thoughts I’ve had all week as I struggle to find little ways of being Creative while getting back into a regular routine.  To complicate matters, I also gave up drinking Pepsi a week ago and the headaches were pretty bad at first.  I still find myself missing my Dad at odd times or wondering how to work in some time for creativity at the end of the day when I need to exercise and pack lunches.  Sometimes, it feels as if I am starting over from scratch every day...

Then a beautiful entry on my sister’s blog reminds me that each of us wrestles with that on any creative journey.

Her gift with words sometimes takes my breath away!  Then I remember to just take the next breath... and repeat... again and again and again.

INHALE: How often does trying to be perfect get in your way of doing anything at all?  How hard are you on yourself when you create anything?  How often to you stop before you get very far and think about starting all over again?  Maybe it is time to stop trying to be perfect and just concentrate on being.

EXHALE:  Instead of trying to do it all ourselves, we can learn from and lean on the wisdom of others.  When you feel flustered or frazzled, remember that you are not alone.  When you feel like giving up, go looking for words of comfort or inspiration from others.  I found these gems tonight and plan to scribe them into my sketchbook!

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.”

-Alan Alda

“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.”

-Edwin Land

“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Life is "trying things to see if they work."

-Ray Bradbury

Savouring Creativity and Snowstorms...

It was a WILD weekend of snow and rain and wind and flickering power and then more snow.  It is only just ending, but instead of worrying, we took it all in stride and stayed indoors.

We played games as a family, took the tree down, tidied rooms in preparation for getting back to a routine this week, made our turkey carcass into soup and I wrote up some thank you cards to the many people who helped my family while I was away at my father’s funeral.

A New Year stretches before us full of creative possibilities, but we have to look for them, embrace them and take advantage of even the smallest moments.

I also have to learn not to be such a perfectionist!  Bethany’s scarf is done and I’ll take a picture of it tomorrow as soon as my camera recharges fully.  I took it along to New Year’s Eve celebrations at a friend’s house and left it in sleep mode rather than off, so it ran down.

Erin’s scarf is on it’s 3rd try because I was trying to find a pattern for her red wool that was different from her sister’s, but Yarn Harlot’s single row scarf  has probably ruined me for most other scarf patterns. Sigh!  Finally, Erin gave me this look tonight that said “Will you just make up your mind and knit something!  School goes back on Wednesday and there is WAY too much snow out there now not to have a funky scarf!” (or at least that’s what I interpreted the look to say... it was during one of the intense battle scenes of the 3rd Lord of the Rings movie, so I can’t be sure I interpreted teenager glare right!

Mother Nature throws us all some challenges now and then.  I must admit that even though Winter can last a bit too long sometimes in my part of the world, I love the fact that snowstorms can force us to just take a break from the business of life and stay in one place.  Unlike tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes or mudslides, they aren’t that life threatening... just cold.  Maybe we need to impose that kind of escapes for ourselves even when it isn’t due to a storm.

INHALE:  I am sure that most of us now have a few new calendars hanging up in the house.  I sat down to fill our Master calendar in the kitchen with all the appointments that have been piling up on bits of paper until I hung the new one and found myself getting very tense.  So I got up and went looking for the beautiful gift my sister sent me, the Pathways to Peace calendar from Ministry of the Arts .  Instead of places to write things, there are suggestions for each day filling up the squares.  It is going to hang in my bedroom so that each day, I can look at the beautiful artwork and take those inspirational challenges or quotes with me into the day.

EXHALE:  Find a colour of pen that you like and take a look at the month that stretches now before you.  Where can you carve out some time for yourself? Time to spend with someone special? Time to indulge in a creative pastime that always seems to fall to the wayside because of chores and commitments.  THIS is the year when you need to plan moments for yourself, even 15 minutes at a time.  THIS is the year to embrace those opportunities, no matter how fleeting, whenever they present themselves. Go ahead and mark out your time now before the month fills up too quickly.  You will feel SO much better for it.  I know that I do!

Heading into a New Year Creatively...

I love the day of New Year’s Eve.  I got up early this morning and curled up on the couch to write in my journal by the light of the Christmas tree, enjoying the twinkle of the lights.

It has been almost 4 months of this adventure with more interruptions along the way than I’d expected, but bringing Creativity into my life on a daily basis has now become a way of life.  I thought it might be funny to end 2009 with a look at some of the daily exercises I tried that DIDN’T work well enough to share them.  Hope they put a smile on your face as we get ready to inhale the air of a brand new year!

1)  Being creative with your socks.  I wore 2 different socks to work to see if anyone would notice!  Less than 1% of the kids and staff at school noticed.  One student asked if I’d gotten dressed in the dark and several just looked at my with an “I hope I don’t get weird and senile like that when I am old!” look.

2)  Using food colouring to change the colours of food like potatoes.  DON’T!  (Even the pictures looked too gross to put up on the site!)

3)  Making an Acrostic with the letters of your name.

J-ust

E-xhuberant

N-ice

N-utty

I-maginative

F-riendly

E-xtroverted

R-eally not sure this is a good idea...

4)  Finger painting with your feet.  What was I thinking except to see if my toes had any talent.  Artists are always worried about something happening to their hands... but I will NOT be learning to draw with my feel if that comes about.  Luckily, I tried this one when the kids were out. I am sure they’d have been more talented, but the mess would have sent Nick into shock.

5)  Writing Your Day as a Dr. Seuss Poem.  “The last days of teaching before Christmas break, are filled with caffeine just for sanity’s sake.  The students are bouncy and giddy with glee... I might as well try to nail slush to a tree!”

INHALE: We sometimes forget that in order to become more Creative, we have to try things that WON’T work in order to find what will.  Thomas Edison is quoted as saying “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”  For the rest of this adventure, I want to keep trying and possibly failing because the discoveries along the way will be more exciting than how often I succeed.  I found this quote of his that will be one of my mantras for 2010:

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

EXHALE: If you can find a quiet moment in the chaos of the year’s ending, write a list of 3 things that you discovered about yourself this year, 3 things you’d like to change in yourself or the world around you in the New Year and write down 3 quotes that inspire you on the same page of your book or journal.

Then go quietly out into the last day of this year and celebrate it’s ending and all the new beginnings that stretch before us!

Watching and Waiting...

The first snowstorm of the season has left our city looking like a magical postcard.  Everything is transformed into a winter wonderland where imperfections are covered up under the puffy whiteness of new beginnings.  Right now, I feel like my life could use a blanket of that snow!

The past few days have been both busy and difficult ones.  We have been preparing our house and our lives for Christmas, living with hope in our hearts and running the gauntlet of seasonal commitments... all the while knowing that the phone could ring any day to tell me that my father has lost his battle with cancer.

Every phone call has become something to treasure, even the awful, incoherent ones like this afternoon.  Hearing his voice, however tired, means that I can still reach him on the other end of a phone line.  Every chance I have to tell him that I love him is one more time that he will hear those words from my lips as well as from my heart.

Our Christmas tree is a mad celebration of homemade and purchased ornaments that stretch back all the way to the first ornament I stitched when I was a little girl who wanted to make a Mary for the tree.

I have cardinals and a banjo to remind me of my Bop and Jet, precious grandparents that I lost while still in my teens.

Talented friends have made many beautiful ornaments for me over the years... this is just the most recent one to grace this year’s tree...

or a carving from Debbie that will someday grace my daughter’s tree when she has a home of her own.

Every year I try to make a different ornament for friends and family, always keeping one for our tree, like this Santa from a few years ago.

Sometimes, like this year, Christmas can also be about preparing to say Goodbye.

This little bear graced the trees of my Childhood.  Made of Chenille pipe cleaners, “Boris” has been slowly rusting and rotting away from the inside.  Last year, I couldn’t bear to throw him out and put off the decision.  This year, the analogy between an ornament and my father’s failing body seems almost too much to bear.  (OK... that made me groan through my tears!)

We can be Creative in how we let go... as well as how we hold on to things.

INHALE: Some Inhales feel more shaky than others these days, but every moment still teaching me something when I let go and take time to feel things instead of staying numb and busy.  As I was hanging my ornaments this year, I was aware of how my best friend is starting her tree over almost from scratch after losing everything in a fire last spring.  Each one of my ornaments has a story and a legacy... but in the end, they are all just stuff.  No matter what gets broken, lost, destroyed of thrown out, nothing can take away the memories that brought us joy.  It is to that knowledge and hope that I cling to as I take each breath.

EXHALE:  Create a new piece of history for your home, buy a new ornament that speaks to you, a new tablecloth to lay out or a new story of the holidays to read to children.  Try a new cookie recipe to share with a friend.  No matter which holiday you celebrate in this darkening time of year, add something new to your life this week.  Take the time to LET GO of something else this week as well... a negative emotion or something broken that doesn’t work.  When everything felt out of control today, I sat down and sorted the pen jar near the phone and threw out 6 of the pens that really didn’t work anymore.  It felt surprisingly good.

Greeting Advent Creatively...

Advent is one of my favourite season of the year.  I love the very idea of preparing room, setting the scene for the magic of this season, acknowledging that the best gifts are not the ones that can be purchased.

When we tidied the shed a few weeks ago to bring the winter stuff forward and send the summer stuff back, I stared at the 5 green and red rubbermaid totes in anticipation.  We put up the lights while it was still mild, but they only turned on for the first time tonight.

Part of the joy of unpacking familiar seasonal treasures is the sheer delight we can take in seeing them again.  One of our Advent treasures is the Corner Santa carved for us by the talented Debbie Everett.  She and my step-father’s brother, George Foster, are two incredibly creative people and we are lucky enough to have a treasure or two from each of them in our home.  Debbie and George are both living proof that Creativity can grow and thrive without “formal” training. All that matters is that you explore the potential that lies within you, not how many hours of lessons you take!  This Santa graces the corner by our front door every year, complete with his cross stitch stocking!

Getting ready for Advent also means adding Creative touches around the house.  We have a garland that goes right on top of our usual cranberry coloured swag, tucking into the regular holders...

I fill the two low, white bowls that grace our table for every season with interesting shapes of holiday potpourri and pine cones...

and look around for spots in which to settle favourite treasures about the house.

This year I feel that I am preparing myself Creatively...both inside and out.

INHALE: Forget about rushing out to buy the perfect gifts. While retailers are yelling at us about great bargains and low prices, we need to find the time to centre ourselves.  Some of the best gifts are the ones that money cannot buy.  Some of the best memories are made when we least expect them.  Instead of thinking how much you should spend, think about how you could practice your Creativity this holiday season so that those who mean the most to you know they are loved and cherished.  It is not the cost of the gift that matters, it is the act of giving, especially Creatively, that brings us close to others.

EXHALE:  What touch of colour, what scent, what sound can you savour today that will begin this process of preparing? Many cultures and faiths celebrate light in this time of darkness, contemplate the closing of one year and the beginning of the next.  Down under, the longest day is celebrated instead of the darkest night.  Find a bowl and fill it with holiday treasures, string up a ribbon on which to hang cards as they arrive or sit down and play that first playlist or CD of holiday favourites as you look through cookie recipes.  The possibilities for being Creative, even amid all the business of the season are endless!

Savouring A Couple’s Creativity...

Last spring, our family got a terrifying call.  Our best friends’ barbecue blew up and engulfed their whole house in flames.  In one evening, their lives were turned upside down and their cats perished along with most of their personal belongings... but they had their dog and each other.

Tonight, our family took supper over to their new house, rebuilt on the foundations of their old one.  They moved in this past weekend and are slowly trying to unpack what was restored, put away what people donated and see what is left to buy.  Imagine starting over from scratch for every towel, every sheet... everything!

So we shared a meal in their new house which has echoes of all they loved best about the old one.  Everything is new, everything gleams, but what trials and tribulations they had to go through to get them and get to this point.

The house is a wonderful blend of their unique colour sense and love of textures.  They spent hours and hours pouring over every detail of their plans, took the time to select what they truly wanted and it showed.  From the amazing bar of lights and crystal prisms over the dining room table to the incredible fold out coffee table where we will no doubt spend lots of time gathered to roll 20 sided dice.

I am SO glad to see them back where they belong.

INHALE:  Creativity can sometimes be making something beautiful rise out of the ashes of disaster.  When life throws its very worst at us, there are still moments when we can celebrate what IS going right or just keep putting one foot in front of the other until we move through the dark times and back out into the light.

EXHALE:  Open your book and trace your foot onto the page.  I had to put my foot on the diagonal to get it to fit properly and I decided to leave my socks on to just get a basic foot shape.  Now, fill the shape of your foot with images, words, doodles, colours, scribbles, collage materials or anything that tempts you but move from DARK in the heel of the foot towards LIGHT in the toes.  Our lives are a series of steps from tragedy to triumph, night to day, challenge to victory and darkness into light. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!

Tearing Down to Create Again...

Today, one of the Creative women I admire most took the courageous step of announcing that she was closing down her cross stitch design business.   Sometimes you have to end something in order to create something new.

Teresa and I met through cross stitch just over a decade ago, but we quickly formed a friendship that went beyond just working in the same industry.  As cross stitch began to falter, she and I began to act as sounding boards for each other and talk about if and how we could take our Creativity in other directions.

Four years ago, we went to Dragon*Con in Atlanta to see if we wanted to transition into Fantasy artwork on the con circuit.  She also helped paint me green for my She-Hulk adventure as mentioned in yesterday’s post.  Last February, we went to the SCBWI conference in New York together to see if children’s book illustration would offer new possibilities.

The joy of having her as a friend is that we share some of the same hopes and insecurities, interests and insights as well as quests and questions.  While we have very different styles, we both feel called to continue to share our Creativity with the world... we’re just still trying to find the next way to do that!

I do know that the past 5 years would have been a lot more scary and stressful without her encouragement, support and sense of humour.

I stayed home today to take care of Bethany who is still running a fe er.  I also got up the courage to tackle a demolition of my own.  A year ago, I overhauled my Dragon Dreams website to reflect the change my artwork was taking as I honoured the 98 published cross stitch designs that I had created, but also tried to showcase the different directions I was heading in.  Then I created a separate website for illustration once I got feedback that Art Directors don’t have time to sift through intensive sites looking for your artwork.

I’ve limped along since then feeling very fragmented and slightly confused at how to make things better.  Today, I realized that the only way to rework the site was to start over from the very beginning, look at what works, get rid of what doesn’t and focus on what truly needs to be covered by the website while making it an informative place to visit.

I am in the middle of the destruction and rebuilding process, but I am actually pleased at how well it is turning out. I'll post on my blogs as soon as the new site is uploaded.

INHALE: Sometimes we have to rebuild from the ashes as friends of ours have done with their house, shut down a business to start in a new direction, crumple up a drawing that isn’t working or go back to the beginning and start over.  Any Creative person, crafter or artist has experienced this more than once.  I’m not sure it ever gets any easier, but I am finally learning to trust that something even better may come from drastic measures.

EXHALE:  I tried to explore today's topic in a fun way.  Find a few magazines for images or inspirational photos.  Instead of trimming them carefully with scissors, rip and tear them out then glue them into your book so that they overlap and create a collage background (you can leave white spaces).  Next, write some words over the images or around them that add to your Creative inspiration.  If this seems too time-consuming for your hectic day, try a simpler exhale: crumple a plain piece of paper and then smooth it out again then draw or write a message to yourself on the less than perfect paper as a reminder that we often set ridiculous standards for ourselves.

Time to Find a Box...

I  decided that today was a good excuse to go box hunting.  Not all of my Creativity explorations are going to fit in a sketchbook.  There are some that will need a safe place to be stored until this year long adventure is up.  In one of those cool moments of Serendipity that seem to be happening a lot lately,  Erin’s Grade 9 English teacher assigned them a project for next Wednesday where they have to create a “Box About Me”.  Erin will need to box up at least a dozen items that represent something about herself, her likes and her personality.

Michael’s was having a sale on photo boxes, which are a great size for stuff like this.  I’d cleaned out all of our empty shoe boxes after our expedition to Maine to buy sneakers this summer, so there were no plain boxes anywhere in our house.

So we both went box hunting, and we both had to adjust our expectations.

It was one of those days when most of the boxes on sale were just a little bit... well... ugly!

I’d been dreaming of a plain white photo box that I could decorate, decoupage and doodle on.  Instead, there were wild, loud patterns that didn’t do anything for either of us.  There were colour combinations that made me want to cringe and that got me thinking about why I react negatively to certain colours.  I almost challenged myself to take the colour I hated the most to see if I could work through that or turn it into something I liked... and then I found this box at the very bottom of the bin.

Remember those doodle posters that were around in the late 70s and early 80s?  I know I am dating myself, but they are making a comeback.  You get a huge poster with lots of black and then white spaces you can colour in. LOTS of white spaces and tiny little markers.  I loved them, but I don’t think I ever got more than halfway through a poster before it got crushed by the mess in my closet.

This pattern reminded me of those posters, so of course I grabbed it.  Erin found a marbled one in her favourite colour (red) and so the hunters returned home with their boxes.

I have dozens of markers.  I have entire marker sets filled with luscious colours that make me want to drool... but when I started to colour in my photo box shapes, I discovered a little problem...the colour was all rubbing off onto ME!

The only thing that would colour through the odd finish of the box were sharpie markers.  I only had 5 colours on hand, so I started a little bit but then decided I need to go find a sharpie marker set with a wider variety of colours.

This is going to be so much fun to work on!

INHALE:  We all need safe places to tuck our treasures.  Most of us have never lost that childhood love of picking up treasures to keep.  I could SO identify with Laura Ingalls when her pocket ripped out of her dress because she’d gathered too many pebbles!  Having a safe place to keep treasures only becomes a problem when the treasures overflow everywhere.  I am sure NONE of you have EVER had that happen with yarn, fabric, beads or anything else... right? We all have hiding spots for things, but now it’s time to make a treasure chest!

EXHALE:  Time to make a treasure chest... or at least start.  Find an empty box, basket, container or anything that speaks to you creatively.  Over the next few weeks, decorate it with paint, fabric, buttons, ribbons, paper scraps or anything else that suits your fancy.  I think I have some 3D fabric paint in a drawer somewhere that I may dig out to use on the black lid.  You don’t have to rush this experiment.  Just start out slow and see what happens.  The most important thing is to create a place to store your treasures and experiments that you will be making on this journey.

A Year of Living More Creatively...

Birthdays are great times to start massive, monumental projects.  Like New Year’s resolutions, there is something about beginning another year of your life that makes you incredibly reflective.  Birthdays are often excuses to do something selfish, frivolous or indulgent.  I have had lots of practice in that area!  Four years ago, to celebrate turning 40, I painted myself green.  To clarify, I entered the costume contest at DragonCon in Atlanta as She-Hulk after a whole summer of lifting weights and eating clean... but that was a whole other blog.

This adventure began  as I searched for something to make my 44th year of life on this planet more interesting.  Last year, I learned how to knit socks.  44 is somehow less exciting than milestones like 40, 45 or 50.  I wanted something a bit more substantial than picking up a new skill.  Something that would last for a full 365 days until I celebrated my 45th, but that would also make me far more aware of each day’s potential.  My grandmother said that time raced much faster the older you got and I now believe her!  I wanted something ... some adventure... some challenge that could take a whole year to tackle... which is why you are now reading these words.

Welcome to a way of living more Creatively each and every day. This blog is going to be all about discovering and befriending the creative essence that lives inside each one of us.  Creativity is nurtured rather than learned, practiced rather than acquired.  It is already inside us human beings struggling to get out, begging to be born in work, image, song, craft, cooking, dance etc.  If we are honest with ourselves and our inner nature, Creativity isn’t something we can live without.  Just as I believe we are all born with it, I know that it is as essential to our daily existence as breathing.  So... time to put this into practice.

Just like breathing, every daily meditation I am going to explore will have 2 components, 2 parts, 2 movements; inhale and exhale.  Inhalations are about inspiration, things to take in and ponder.  Exhalations are about trying to put that idea or aspect of being Creative into practice in a tangible way.  The best of these will be shared on this blog and by the end of the year, I will have spent a full year of my life trying to live more creatively in everything I do. 

INHALE:  Take a deep breath.  It’s ok to feel a bit scared and intimidated when you start something new, but putting it off doesn’t really solve anything.  A blank page can stare at you forever.  Take a leap of faith and realize that every creative act begins with a single flash point of inspiration or insanity, passion or possibility.  You cannot knit anything until you cast on, you cannot quilt until you cut and stitch, you cannot draw until you make the first mark and you cannot sing until you take a deep breath and then let it out again.  It is time to begin.

EXHALE:  As an illustrator, I tend to want to draw pictures and doodle to explore things, so I have bought myself a big black sketchbook in which to record things during this 365 day adventure.  A log book of sorts to keep a record of my journeying through this creative landscape.  Yours doesn’t have to be a sketchbook. It could be a notebook, a coil bound scribbler or anything that grabs your fancy, but it will probably be helpful to have one place in which to write your thoughts and ideas if you decide to explore along with me.  Don’t worry about making things perfect, just give yourself permission to get messy and make mistakes.  No one ever has to see what you create unless you want to share.  I think I may eventually go on a hunt for a box of some kind as well. Creative Exploration will probably involve the 3rd dimension, but that will be a challenge for another day. I am trying to take things one breath at a time!

Once you have found a book in which to begin, open it to write your name and address on the inside cover in your favourite colour of pen or pencil.  Write your address too in case your log book ever wanders away from you on one of your creative adventures so that someone can help it find its way home. 

You don’t have to write, draw or create anything else today unless you want to.  Today’s challenge was all about just getting started on the journey.  I can’t wait to see how this unfolds!