Creativity in Chaos and Quiet..

It’s been a busy time in our household.  I am now substitute teaching 3 to 5 days a week until Christmas because of the 3 day a week position and other days that had been booked way ahead that I’d accepted.  It is also volleyball season, so our whole family jumped in the van right after school on Friday and drove up to Bathurst , just over 2 hours away, to stay overnight before yesterday’s huge tournament.  Erin’s team played an exhausting 13 games in the 9 hours of the tournament (winning 9 and loosing 4) going right down to a 15 point tiebreaker for 3rd place when both teams were literally falling down with exhaustion.  Along the way they overcame some real challenges, played some truly beautiful volleyball and gave all the parents a lot to cheer for.  I manages to knit scarves without too many changes in tension... though the metal needles got a little slippery when my palms got sweaty!  I discovered that creating amid chaos and noise not only helps keep me calm, it gives me something to show for all those hours on the court side.

My mom was at a retreat all day yesterday entitled Making Way for Advent  where she got to think, create and celebrate fellowship in far less noise.  It was an event that I really wanted to attend, but I’d already missed 2 weekends of tournaments while teaching in Toronto and being at the cross stitch retreat a few weekends ago.

Don’t misunderstand.  There is nothing wrong with any parent or person putting themselves first now and then to follow their dreams, conduct business or indulge in something they really need.  Being a parent or being in a relationship with a partner (or both) means that you have to find the balance between the needs of self and the needs of the other(s). It means finding ways of being Creative whether you are in chaos or quiet.  It means knowing that there can be a certain peace or satisfaction found in almost any moment of our lives if we start looking for them.

Just make your choices and go with them instead of looking over your shoulder or wondering what could have been.

Inhaling Creativity is teaching me to live in each moment more fully.

INHALE:  I think that we need both Chaos and Quiet in which to create... just not at the same time.  Anyone who has ever spent time at an event where people are being Creative knows that people with energy can get a little noisy.  That energy can pump us up and push us on to new heights of inspiration and exhilaration when we understand that almost anything is possible.  Quiet moments on the other hand, allow us to get in touch with our inner selves, recharge our batteries, sort through our supplies, organize our thoughts or creating spaces and dreams of next projects or possibilities.  Nature reminds us all the time that both stages are part of the circle.  As the Fall meanders slowly into Winter here and prepares for a sleep, I know that on the other side of the world, the frenzy of Spring is leading into the warmth of summer.

EXHALE:  Many of us prefer one part of this cycle more than the other, even though both are necessary.  Maybe I’ve been studying too many plant life cycles for the Biology class I am supervising with the diploid(2N) and haploid (N) stages of things, but it really rings true for me.  Divide a page in your book in half and label the two sections QUIET and CHAOS.  In each area, write down, doodle, collage or identify the things you like about each stage.  What Creative acts do you like to do in chaos with others or what creative things do you like to do that involve chaos?  What do you enjoy about having quiet time in which to create?  Do some creative things lend themselves to being done in both quiet and chaos?  Like discovering that you can actually enjoy using a colour you didn’t think you liked, you may find that there are quiet a few things about being Creative in Chaos or Quiet that you didn’t expect you enjoyed as much as you do!

Creativity in Teaching...

When I first started this journey over 2 months ago, I never dreamed the many ways in which Creativity would show itself in my life.  This Monday, I began a substitute teaching assignment to replace a teacher 3 days a week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) from now until the Christmas break.  This offers me some predictability in my schedule and also give me some consistency in terms of the young people I am dealing with.  I will be helping a student teacher cope with the teaching load for these classes and also working with struggling learners.

Creativity has its place in Education because we don’t all learn things in the same way.  I went to a French high school in Montreal as a french immersion student and learned most of my courses in a language that wasn’t my mother tongue, so I learned a variety of ways to help myself understand.  I drew pictures, made cartoons and graphed out charts or diagrams to help things make sense.

Tomorrow, I am bringing in our play dough so that the struggling students can BUILD a cell with all of the parts in different colours and shapes of play dough.  I have also come up with a truly dorky rap song about how to learn the chain of plants from algae to bryophytes and tracheophytes (which include spore plants, gymnosperm and angiosperm). It should be interesting at least...if they don’t fall off their chairs laughing themselves silly!

Being Creative in how we teach ourselves to absorb information or learn new things can only enrich the experience...

INHALE:  The more our society advances, the more we learn how different and individual each one of us is.  We are all UNIQUE creations and yet society continues to expect us to behave “en masse” (rough translation- as a group).  Maybe being 6’5” in my bare feet allows me to balk at being fit into a cookie-cutter, one size fits all mold, but I think we do ourselves an INJUSTICE when we expect everything to only go one way.  It might be easier not to have to push the envelope, think outside the box or try new ways of doing something, but that does not mean we shouldn’t keep looking for NEW solutions to OLD problems.

EXHALE: Do you know what your own learning style is (or styles are)?  Do you learn best when you hear something explained? See it done? Try it yourself? Take something apart and put it back together?  Spend a few minutes thinking about this and doodle, write or jot down ideas about what WORKS for YOU in your notebook.  The more you know what works best for you, the easier it is to be Creative within your own style of learning and share that with others to help them learn as well.  Just because something works for someone else, does not mean it has to work for you, so keep searching until you find the key to your own puzzles. That way someday, you can help someone else unlock theirs!

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.

Freaking Non-Knitters Out...

Yesterday’s Inhale and Exhale wouldn’t post properly, so I will try to add them in a post edit. There are days when it won’t let me make the icons as small as usual as well, so I am learning to go with the flow and tame my inner perfectionist.

I also posted about the two scarves that I’ve been working on since acquiring new wool in Toronto.  If I hadn’t been teaching classes there and staying up so late at night, but the weather is getting cold since my return home as well, so the urge to knit new things for my neck is just too strong to ignore.

When I worked on this one in the staff room at lunch yesterday, I had several people come over to feel the combination of the two yarns put together.  I also had a few teachers ask me how many things I knit in a year.  This might be because I’ve already knit 3 baby blankets for half of the staff that is pregnant and they’ve also seen me working on my socks. I don’t think I’ve ever kept track of the number of projects I knit in a year.

I also took out the scarf during Guided Study period.  This is a half an hour period for enrichment, extra help or catching up on homework that changes every 5 or 6 weeks as the marks are handed in by teachers and students who are struggling or excelling are identified.  I’d planned to read a bit since every student who doesn’t have work to do is encouraged to bring a book, but I realized that I couldn’t keep an eye on the entire class that way. Hence the knitting.  I knit by feel.  I’ve always been able to handle basic knitting stitches (anything short of cables and patterns with lots of counting) without looking since University when I would knit and study or knit and watch TV.  This has come in handy when I’ve had to divide movies into which ones I need to watch (knit) and which ones I can listen to while glancing up now and then (stitch).  It also keeps me from being a nagging passenger on long car trips and I can knit in the dark if I have to talk to Nick to keep him awake at the end of a long journey.  It is also really good for freaking high school kids out.

I began to knit while the kids were working on their projects.  Every now, one of the teenagers would glance up and find me watching them while my hands knit.  Whispers began, nudges as I continued to glance around the room surveying them.  Finally, one brave girl put up her hand and spoke. “Excuse me, miss, are you doing that without looking down at it?”  I just grinned and nodded.

Who says knitting is boring!

Even when you are fairly well practiced at a skill, you can also continue to learn and be inspired.  While I was up in Toronto, I found this wool for Bethany that brings a  hint of orange into the blue, white and pink mix.  The soft colours will be perfect for her and they also tied in nicely with my “use more of the colour you like the least” challenge.  By now, I am actually growing a little fond of orange.

While I was in Toronto, Jocelyne was knitting a cool scarf pattern before one of the classes.  When I commented on the pattern, she showed me how it was a  short pattern that you repeated on EVERY row until you either ran out of wool or got sick of knitting the scarf.   You can find it on Yarn Harlot’s website here .  This is what mine is starting to look like:

Go ahead... practice being Creative in public and see what happens!

INHALE:  Being Creative in new ways or learning a new variation of a skill we already posses can bring a deep enjoyment into our lives along with an excitement that keeps us hooked.  When things become routine and predictable, they can also become boring.  I don’t ever want what I create to bore me. If it does, then it’s time to find something new to try.

EXHALE:  Which hobby, craft or skill do you feel most confident in?  It may be one that you have practiced for a long time or one in which you developed a sense of mastery quickly.  In order to keep this well-practiced skill from growing stale, try one of the following.  Try starting something that you have never attempted before (a new style of pattern, a new stitch, a different technique).  Visit a craft store, website or guild meeting where you could learn from someone else who practices this skill and get inspired.  Look through books and dare to try something you think might be too hard for you.  When we push ourselves, we can grow.  Or, find something new that absolutely delights you, as I did with this scarf pattern and savour the new experience.

Surrounded by Creativity...

It’s been hard to blog, even though I had to add Internet access to the room in order to get Teresa’s files up here safely and ask her the occasional question as she gets over the nasty flu that kept her from coming to the show in Toronto.  While everyone REALLY misses her, they are a wee bit glad that she kept her germs at her house!

I’d forgotten what a huge city Toronto is compared to Moncton.  I’d also forgotten just how small the CN tower makes me feel!

This festival is the most INCREDIBLE experience because you are literally surrounded by Creativity for the whole day!  I’ve seen the most amazing beaded, knitted and quilted outfits that I’ve been longing to go up and touch, half drying or half completed class projects being carried carefully by their creators as they head to their next adventure and enough craft supplies to send me into fits of “I need to have that!”  I’ve been good actually... I’ve also been teaching most of the time!  The only purchase that I did justify yesterday between classes and my lecture was this yarn.  It’s been REALLY cold here in Toronto and the taxi showed up just early enough in Moncton that I forgot to grab one of my scarves to bring with me. Yeah... that sounds like a convincing excuse...

Despite having to juggle things, change things and adapt, all of my presentations have gone well so far.  I’ve spent time with amazing, creative people and also had fun just playing.  Yesterday was the joint “Tiny Dragon” class where Teresa and I both designed little dragons over one to “torture” them with. 

One creative stitcher even brought along some of my Gemstone Dragons  that she’d stitched OVER ONE  backstitched with BLENDING FILAMENT!

They looked amazing and I felt so honoured that someone loved those dragons enough to work on them that small.

I did a lecture called The Perfection Trap that reminded stitchers not to point out all their mistakes to others or strive for impossible standards and then went on to teach my Hoarding Your Creativity class.  What fun we had!! I’d made a bunch of Inspiration tags before leaving home with the ShrinkyDinks film. If you haven’t played with it recently, go find some at a craft store and tuck it away for a day when you want to play.

That was really what made the last class go by so quickly.  I was inspiring them and sharing why it was important for Creative people to have a book or box in which to hoard things they find that spark their creativity from quotes to scraps, images to ideas and photos to textures.  Everyone got so caught up in playing on that deep level that children know instinctively that the time just flew by. Before we knew it, we were cleaning up and I was heading back to the hotel to snip more floss and chase beads around on the carpet. That’s another entry.

INHALE:  We sometimes forget how important it is to surround ourselves with other creative people.  They may not all create the same things that you do, the same types of objects or crafts that you like, but when you are with other creative people, it recharges you in a special way because you don’t feel as alone.  We cannot create in a vacuum.

EXHALE: Whatever craft you love most or whatever creativity you have just discovered, find out if there is a gathering, a special day, a class or a retreat that you could attend in the next few months so that you could take a large block of time to spend not only doing something creative but also surround yourself with other creative people.  I know that even though this festival can be tiring, it is also way more INSPIRING!!

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.

The More You Look- The More You SEE...

It has been a double-edged sword couple of days.  I’ve been filling in at one of our local high schools.  When an administrator is out sick, they bring in a replacement so that someone can come down and help in the office, so I cover that teacher’s classes, but then I am also available to cover other classes for emergencies, relief etc.  I have been a variety of people and covered an interesting mix of subjects this week, but some of the classes broke my heart.

It is hard for me to see kids who are turned off school.  Some of them have dropped out several times, skip school, smoke drugs and have a variety of learning disabilities that truly stack the deck against them.  I tried to teach one group of 17 English this week with no lesson plan since the movie they were supposed to watch got misplaced.  Ouch!  We tried all kinds of creative things with words and short sentences, but it was like pulling teeth and dodging bullets at the same time.  I came home yesterday feeling very bruised creatively at the dullness I saw behind so many sets of eyes.

But the more I keep looking for unusual ways Creativity can sneak into our lives, the more I find.  I didn’t have my camera at school today, but when I left, there was this band of dark, steel blue across the sky as the heavens opened up on the hill, but not down in town.  The lighting was odd and dramatic.  When I drove up past Magnetic Hill to get Nick, the rain was pouring down in sheets, but by the time we came down 10 minutes later, there was a huge rainbow arcing across the city from end to end against vivid fall coloured trees.  It was so amazingly beautiful that it took my breath away.

INHALE:  There is plenty of ugly to look at in our world... on the news, in dark alleys, under rocks, behind facades and in the futures of some children.  Sometimes when we don’t like what we see, we just have to look at things a different way.  Other times, we have to go looking for beauty and possibilities in other things to change the afterimage on our retinas to something else.  The trickiest part is to know when to look away and when to look more intently.

EXHALE:  There are faces and odd shapes in more than just peppers and patterns.  What do you see in the tree at the beginning of this blog?  A wise wizard? A scary monster?  Grab your digital camera and go hunting for some neat twisted or unusual shape out there to capture for your scrapbook.  Take some time to really LOOK at the small stuff, the odd stuff and recharge your batteries after the work week.