There’s No Such Thing As TOO MANY Choices...

Bethany’s fever is gone.  Her temperature was normal all day so I made her have a long, steamy bath to help her cough and wash her hair then stripped her bed and washed the sheets along with her jammies.  She was finally allowed out of her room and almost couldn’t decide what to do first.  I made the choice easy... finish up the school work you missed, then you can play now that you’re feeling better.

I may be Creative... but I am still a MOM!

Tonight, I needed a bit of colouring therapy, but the last time I had my poster out, I found myself bothered by the fact that the set only came with these colours.

So... I went on a hunt and found THESE...

There can’t possibly be anything bad about having 50 colours to choose from instead of just 10, can there?  Only that it makes me wonder where to begin!

So I picked out a section of the border that I’d been eyeing for a while and began to colour. I even added some shading detail because flat colour sort of blended together a bit too much.

As that section began to fill in, the colours really started to jump...

and when it was all done, the contrast of the black with the inner colours made it almost SING.

Nope, there’s definitely no such thing as having too many choices!

INHALE:  We all have countless choices to make each and ever day. Eat the apple or the cookie, get out of bed or hide, speed up for the yellow light or slow down, take the stairs or the elevator... the possibilities are almost endless.  Sometimes, the sheer amount of choice we have can seem overwhelming... until we remember that another name for it is FREEDOM!

EXHALE: If you like to draw, go buy yourself a new pencil, crayon or marker set and revel in the amount of colours to choose from.  If you like to cook, go buy a few new spices to play with.  If you like to craft, go explore the aisles and sale bins until you find pieces for your next project.  If you love music, check out a few new tunes outside your usual genre, but be sure to download them legally.  (iTunes Genius feature has let me discover new songs I might otherwise never have heard)  Find a way to add even more choices to your chosen path of Creativity. Your day will be richer for it, even if it takes you a bit longer to make up your mind where to begin!

Appreciating Creativity...

WIthout Creativity, our world would be a far darker and more boring place to live.  I think about this every time I listen to a song that moves me, play an addictive video game, lose myself in a good book or watch someone else use their creative talents to their fullest.

An amazing friend of mine translates things from English to French.  She has done work for companies all across Canada, but this evening she helped me solve a dilemma for a nonprofit client of mine who has never done any French in their campaign before. Since New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada, it was high time they started speaking to both language groups about their project.

My friend has that rare and precious ability to take what is being said in one language and find the best way to say the SPIRIT of the same words in her own mother tongue.  In French we call that “l’esprit de la phrase”.  I sent her the English sentences and before I knew it, she had come up with a powerful version in French that gave me goosebumps.

Watching someone’s Creativity in action can be a powerful thing.

INHALE:  If we don’t treasure Creativity and appreciate it, support and reward it, then we run a great risk that the people who share their talents with us won’t be able do what they are meant to do.  If we continue to cut specialties from school programs, download or share things illegally on the Internet, under value the act of making things by hand,  measure a project’s worth by how much profit it can generate or how it can be licensed, then it may be that books don’t get written, songs go unsung or creative people give up and find “regular” jobs.  We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.

EXHALE:  This is an easy exhalation.  Take half an hour and submerge yourself in appreciating someone else’s Creativity in a way that doesn’t harm its creator.  Read part of a good book, play one of your favourite video games, listen to some great tunes or pop in a favourite movie and curl up with some popcorn.  Afterwards, take a few minutes to write down in your sketchbook or creativity journal what you did and what you appreciated most about it.