Reflections on Creativity and Life

this is what I experienced in school when we did art class. Here is a project now do it now lets see how yours stacks up to mine and everyone elses work. You can draw or you cannot draw, Oh you are an artist and you are not.,
Grade one.
you are 6 years old and your artistic expression is decided for you..
This is against everything that is creative in life.
You do art to enhance that part of your life and the big question is how does one do that.
When I was 6 the rage inside me had begun. By some fortunate stroke my first grade teacher thought I was a good artist and that was that. Who knows why she said that when I knew nothing.
But what she did not tell me was what to do with all this energy that I had to be creative. Without an outlet a creative personality will go crazy. Literally.
Sometimes the crazy looks like anger, sometimes it looks like temper tantrums. sometimes it looks like a bad child.
In my art class I will attempt to teach the children how to channel that energy in a positive way. Make the rage into a raging river on a canvas. Make the tantrum turn into a mural. You have to spend that creative energy or it will spend you.
Believe me I wish someone had shown me at a very young age what to do with the storm of energy in me.
I also have seen the result of a quiet child being quiet because he was thinking. You can think things out better through art.
Art can be your lifeline .
All I know is a lot of years of working as an artist.
I could have done so much more if I started earlier.

The great thing about the end of all things is that it is the beginning of the new thing.
Have you ever noticed how good it feels to clean up the house after Christmas and get on with the new year.
the end is always the most hopeful. We think well that is that.
That is the show, that is the year, that is my life.
Till we get to the last one of those we always can start again.
I have been listening to Mere Christianity on you tube. There is something comforting in C. S, Lewis’ voice. He calmly says what we all have thought one way or another.
He merely states the end of all the conclusions you might have thought of.
All the possibilities, wishes, hoping, assuming but never really examining.
Dear reader it is my greatest wish for you to consider this. In the end of it all, what does it matter what we have accomplished in this world if there is even the remotest possibility that there indeed after this life a new one that we must live. And if there is even the remotest possibility that there is Someone we must give an account to , because in the end if there is a new beginning then what will it be for you.

In the army, they do not give you options to do what you want. I was thinking how freeing that is in a way.
We give ourselves options to do lots of things that we really should not.
We say Oh I will do this today but then again I have the option not to. So do you think that thing gets done. NO!
Options just are another word for procrastination.
Life goes better with few options.
I like how the army gives you no options about keeping your room clean. zero options. You do it they scream at you and maybe even kick you out. Even if you were messy before you learn real quick to not be messy anymore.
We give ourselves options to fail.
If this does not work out I can always bail out. Yup. options are also another word for not trying hard enough.
The more I ponder it I think the fewer the options you give yourself the better you will be.
We eliminate a lot of stress by having no choice about matters that count. marriage. passing a test, getting fat, being lazy etc. I am sure you can think of a thing or two that would be great to have no options about.
The pioneers were not people of a lot of options. Live or die was pretty much the only one they got. Even if it was so so so hard they did not turn back and say “Hey I did not count on all this pain involved with moving across country in a cruddy wooden wheeled  trailer going over horrible non roads and all these people trying to kill me not to mention all the dirt and where oh where is a bathtub. I really was not thinking how cold is cold with only canvas for a house. NO this is not what I planned for.
They said.l” We go forward or we die.”
No options.
I don’t even know what grueling means.They did.
Wouldn’t you like to see how it would be if they came back in this time and saw us quitting over such a minimal amount of pain. Don’t you think they would think we were the weakest of all Gods creatures.
NO options equals good!

This morning the fog was so heavy it was hard to see more than 10 feet in front of the car. Yet we have to drive down the road not knowing what is coming at the car.
Everyone has the same experience in life. You can only see a few seconds down the road really.
You can plan and plan but you won’t see all the variables till you get in that time where you see what your choices have played out. You can’t see that fire coming, you can’t see that car wreck before you are in it, you can’t stop your leg from breaking when you fall in front of your house,
anything bad can happen or anything good. You did not know that stranger was going to come in today and want you to do a lot of work for them.
You did not know that the sun would come out first and melt the ice so that you do not fall in front of your house. I could go on.
Worry is totally useless at all times.

There is nothing you can do about it. Do not look back and say oh I should have done this or that.
It doesn’t matter.
If one thing goes bad it might be a wonderful change that you could have not seen in a million years. You did not know you would be happy in a new place.
My dogs don’t worry about anything. They could not care less about what tomorrow holds. All they know is I will feed them and walk them and pet them and they are totally happy today.
We need to be more trusting that whatever is next will be just that what happens next and not the end of the world.
Unless it is the literal end of the world but that is another thought for another day.

A friend of mine once told me that there were two ways to learn something/ Listen or Pain.
I would say that 90 percent of the time we choose pain because we do not believe what someone else tells us.
We think to ourselves that they don’t know all the facts like we do.
It is easy to see the red flags once you are past the initial choice. That is because we are not all emotional about it anymore. It seems as plain as the nose on your face.
If everyone else is doing something that makes us think it must be ok too. We think well everybody cant be wrong.
But they can.
This morning I am thinking of the many times people have told me something and I immediately forgot it.
Then it comes back to haunt me after I see what resulted from me ignoring the advice.
If someone tells you something,, write it down and think about it. Don’t just disregard it. People don’t offer advice unless they see something that you might be missing.
If you hear the same thing over and over. There is a reason for that.
You don’t know everything. Especially about yourself. remember listen or pain.

Here is the reality. Most people tell you who you are if you do not tell them first. There is a split second of time where whoever is in charge will be the decider.
If you know this you can will be in charge.
If you don’t know this I will guarantee everyone else will be the judge of you.
How do you go from being up for grabs to taking charge?
Easy, know who you are and be comfortable with that and project that and leave it alone.
The second you try and people please you A. don”t please anyone, and B. stop the real valuable part of you to not come out.
Every person has something important to contribute or at least should.
Every artist needs to find their voice and every person needs to find their contribution to society.
That is the least we should do.
If you have been raised with a person who is always apologizing for being alive then you will have a hard time to overcome that.
It can only be done when you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about what you have to give. You cannot think about two things at once thank goodness, so you are either thinking of yourself or others first.
If you think about it giving a speech is much easier if you have a lot passion about what you hare going to say. This is because you care about the topic more than yourself.
This is my recommendation to everyone including myself.
Focus on what you are passionate about and you will have more concern with it than you.
If you only live what is important to you, you will project passion and that will project confidence and you will be the one telling the world who you are… because You know who you are.

Space abhors a Void. All the universe hates a void. Something always goes into an open space.
A painting has negative space that is just as important as the positive space. Without great negative space the whole paintings looks awful.
More and more I am seeing that time is like the universe. Something fills our days even when we are sitting in a lump on the bed. You are spending your time sitting in a lump wondering what to do with your day.
It is like paying for a running cab meter while you sit in the driveway trying to decide where and when to go.
Tick Tick Click Click.
I say if you are going pay for a cab(and we all are) plan where you want to go when you are half asleep in the bed not when you are sitting in the cab. We get into the cab the moment our feet hit the floor. Boom you are in the cab.
This morning I was sitting here thinking what am I going to blog about. Then I got the cab illustration and now it is exciting to think about this very thing and start telling my cabby where to start driving.
I think I will get a cab charm to remind me of planning my day.
“Where to lady?” I will tell him. WE are going somewhere wonderful today. And away we go.

Everything in life can get frozen .
You can be stuck in one place because you are afraid to move in one direction or another. So you are frozen in Limbo which is bad.
Your car will not drive if it has been sitting a long time in your driveway. The battery goes dead and you need a jump to even start the car.
Our muscles shrink and atrophy from not using them in only a few days.
Your mind freezes into a coma if we don’t challenge it all the time.
We immediately start forgetting everything we used to know if we don’t practice what we know.
You can lose your whole french class lesson in a matter of months.
If you don’t water plants they die, If you don’t give relationships time and energy they die,
Nothing is full and good to go ever.
People we used to know will become strangers if you don’t keep up with them. It does not matter if you were best friends for years and years. Just let a few years go by without a call and boom, stranger.
Write a blog and wait weeks to make the next entry, all reader lose interest and leave.
Stop painting for even a week and the horror of starting a new show is huge.
Sometimes this is not because you are lazy or inconsiderate but it just what happens when you get absorbed in something else. Maybe you get sick and lay low for a few weeks, maybe you have to take care of someone else .
Frozen does not care why you are there. It just happens.
You just have to thaw everything out when it gets frozen.
Frozen does not have to be permanent. You can turn up the heat and it will thaw.
You have to be a little space heater in every area of your life that is frozen .
The number one best way to be a space heater for me is go stand by someone who is on fire.
Read someone who is on fire.
Do not stand by anyone who is frozen or they will make you even more frozen.
Read this word “Fire” feel that word, be that word, Now go burn up the day like you never burned up a day before. You show this day what fire means. Melt everything in your path. Go, Go, Go.

A few blogs ago I was talking about stepping back from the picture to see more clearly.
I thought of another thing that needs stepping away from constantly.
Your whole life. Looking at your whole life as a complete collection of events and choices and actions and reactions= Looking at the big picture.
Evaluating where you are right NOW in relation to where you have been and deciding where to go from here is a big issue.
Usually people live minute by minute.
I remember walking around the block delivering a newsletter that I had written for the neighborhood that I lived in at the time and thinking that this was the only selfless thing I have ever done in my life. It was a moment of clarity.
The irony is that that moment was both horrible and beautiful at the same time.
Really seeing what is what is the only thing that makes us free at anytime.
In this horrible market, we hear of sad stories about people who invested in houses and apartment buildings thinking with all honesty that the value was there because the appraiser said so or the relator said so and now are losing their old age investment. The thing to do here is step way way back and say to yourself, “What is the most important thing right now given all I have learned?”
Everybody has to answer that for themselves, but you should know that what follows will be a blessing for you and you would not have seen it any other way.