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!

There is Nothing Creative about Death... Except how you Celebrate Life

Did I ever dream that when I began this adventure that almost 2 weeks would get swallowed up by pain and grief?  My father passed away the day after my last blog entry and we got the news in the midst of volleyball championships and the night before our church pageant.  I’d planned to blog about the backdrop I’d painted, the massive cookie icing we had planned as a family...  and all of that just disappeared in the rush to book a last minute plane ticket to Tulsa for his funeral.  I traveled as light as I could, left the laptop behind and wrote my thoughts out in my journal instead.  From a blogger’s point of view, I fell of the face of the earth.  From a daughter’s point of view, I went to honour my father’s life.  From a dragon’s point of view, I crawled into a cave to lick my wounds.  Time to step back out into the light.

Though I didn’t come up with an activity for myself each day, I still found that some of the key things I am learning on this adventure will now kick in automatically.  There are three things that I can count on to help me relax no matter what life throws at me.  The first is taking deep even breaths as I think “Inhale, Exhale, Inhale, Exhale” to myself, picturing the little green and blue icons I created for this site.  The second one is finding any random patterned surface and looking for images.  This worked well with tiles on airport washroom floors,  stucco on hotel ceilings, carpet in church waiting rooms and clouds over unfamiliar cities.  The third one is to open my sketchbook that travels everywhere with me and just let random words or images flow out through the pen and onto the paper. Sometimes it will start with an object I want to sketch and other times, the images are more iconic, drawn from memory rather than real life.  All three of these automatically calm me down or give me something creative to focus on as an anchor.

This past week also taught me a lot about Celebrating a person’s Life even as you mourn the loss their Death creates.  It was hard reconciling my memories with the person who meant so much to so many people in a city far away.  It was important to be there to support his newest family as they grieved with the fresh loss but also the peace as Dad’s physical suffering ended.  It was comforting to hear all of the stories of how my father touched the lives of the many families into which he delivered babies in a caring and prayerful way. It was healing to be able to hug siblings and spend time with them when we are usually scattered so far around the globe, sharing memories of Dad that were private to us.

Creativity surrounds us no matter where we go and what we face.  We just have to look for it, reach out for it and draw it close for comfort and inspiration.

INHALE: Living Creatively teaches us to be better prepared for every adventure, even Death.  Every project has an end.  No project is perfect as we always seem to point out to those who compliment us.  Creativity sometimes carries us to create things that are very different that what we first sat down to make, just as our lives sometimes take turns in directions we didn’t expect. Through it all, despite it all, Creative opportunities linger joyfully around us, hoping that we will chose to MAKE something, JOIN in the dance, WRITE to inspire ourselves or others, SING rather than remain silent and GIVE to the world instead of just taking. The choice is always ours.

EXHALE:  Go looking for a photo of someone you loved who is no longer with you.  Find a quiet spot and write down words or memories of what that person meant to you, how they helped you to grow, what you miss most about them and what special memories give you comfort even though they are gone.  Celebrating someone’s life and how it touched you doesn’t just happen at a funeral or a memorial service... the very best of what someone brought to your life carries on within you for the rest of your days.  Celebrate that gift.

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.

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.