Category: Creativity

If I could paint whatever I wanted with zero pressure to do anything someone else wanted, if I had unlimited resources and if I had nothing else to do all day but exactly what I wanted what would I do. You might think dream on but in fact that is what we all can do each day. The constrictions are ones that we put on ourselves . Nobody else puts them on us. We think well I have to do this or I will die.
But the truth is you will not die. And even if you do well we all have to do that anyway.
but you only die once.
Some people think they have to die every day to what they really want.
And as far as resources go.. You have enough.
Once when I lived in San Francisco I had no money so I went dumpster diving and go stuff to paint on. I had no paint so I used charcoal. and varnish. hardware items that were super cheap. .
Now I still have all the time I would ever have. I choose to do somethings not art related .
And you might say well you have no responsiblilites like children.
I knew an artist who had six little kids and she managed to be a painter and o tons of work. She tells her kids Mom has to paint for a few hours and they do not die from neglect. They keep themselves busy and learn to take care of each other.

There are not excuses for not doing what you want. It would be the same for any creative pursuit. And every single pursuit is a creative pursuit.

People have a tendency to be all or nothing when it come to ideas. The danger in that is that it is very easy to close your eyes to all the good things about your previous idea and throw them under the bus for the new and improved idea.
I have done this myself many times. If the new and improved idea strikes me as right, I tend to toss everything old out. For example fashion. I actually deplore old style clothes when I get new ones. I just want to toss old things into a goodwill box and never see them again. Or a furniture style.
All the old seventies clothes which were actually quite ugly seemed to be so forward thinking at the time.
Fashion is a good illustration and so is architecture. We toss out old fashioned Arts and Crafts for modern plastic and then toss out plastic for antique which now have a warmth that modern did not have and we toss it out again to see Modern as the clean sleek style that is really the best.
Thoughts are the same emotional reaction too.
Perspective is what stops you from throwing the baby out with the Bathwater.
You have to look at everything with fresh eyes that take into account keeping the best things and just maybe tweaking them a little. so you have to slow down and think things through and see if you might be losing something precious to grab the new improved idea.
It is easier to tweak something good than it is to do something brand new and find out the ramifications of leaving tried and true.

I love to read Seth Godins’ blog about marketing. He seems to come up with practical ideas that were always there , but he puts his spin on them.
I like the spin.
One thing he said was to question success. That was something I never thought about before . Our tendency is to never question success because if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
But maybe you can do things better so just staying with what has worked in the past might just be a way of being lazy.
So you might say the good is the enemy of the best.
Comfort, success, good times, have to be tempered with striving, losing and terrible times or nobody would ever change.
Your best friend might be business failure or a huge lawsuit or some other pain.
The second you stop crying about it you can start growing and finding a better way.
Success is like beauty, it is fleeting at best.
And you don’t want to gain the whole world and lose your soul.

When I was 20 I had an exercise book. One thing that impressed me was the page on 40 years old. It had a drawing of what you would look like at age 40 if you did not gain any extra weight but just did not
exercise every day.
And then it showed the same body at age 40 with working out.
Just the toll of gravity was enough to make you sick.
This was a great example of not only a body but a mind.
We never do nothing. WE are always sliding downhill if we stop pushing back.
Push ups are hard and even harder for women as we do not naturally have great upper body strength. But they are our best friend. They push up more than your falling down body, they push up your mind too. I dread doing them in the middle of strength training. I look at the clock and think oh no only 5 more minutes and we have to do push ups.
But I can do 13 now without stopping . That might not seem like a lot but by goal is 50 and I want to be able to do that by January.
That clock is going by whether I do them or not so I might as well push back and try with everything I have.
At lease I have more than I did when I started 5 months ago.
Your mind follows your body so pushing your body will automatically push everything else too.
It is the engine.

What are the three graces anyway. The old mythology graces are art, charm and beauty.
Those are nice but of all the things in the world that could be the three graces maybe there is something more important.
You can be charming and beautiful and full of art but at the same time you can be mean and selfish and empty inside.
The big three graces for me are Faith Hope and Charity.
With these three you get the best of all worlds. A reason to do everything else. A good reason.
If you don’t have Faith you will not have Hope and Charity will be forced. Forced charity is like a beautiful woman who is selfish and cruel.
Hope that is not backed by Faith is just wishful thinking. And Faith without action is just insurance.