The Creative Journey

I am ready to start blogging again.

Last August, I accepted a job at the University of Tampa teaching a class on Creativity in for Communication, Journalism and Advertising/Public Relations students. Its a big challenge since I have never done anything like this before, but I am learning a lot about teaching, sharing, and uncovering my own creativity.

My intention is to share more about this on this blog.

It is difficult to read and teach about the creative process without doing it on my own. We are using The Artist's Way and Making is Connecting as our two texts books. One is about a spiritual path to creativity and provides a course framework for uncovering our creative selves including writing morning pages as well as various creative activities and assignments. The other is a cultural perspective on how making things connects us with ourselves and others with a particular focus on making in the digital world or "web 2.0."

So my attention is directed again to this blog project and how I feel I can use it to more effectively express and share my own creative journey, the journey I affectionately refer to as the "upward spiral."

We will see what happens...

Day 56: Un-perfectionism

Though I do prefer order and neatness over messy chaos, I am cool with some mess, enough to not consider myself a perfectionist. And I think that in the long run, it saves me a bunch of stress.

When I first got into doing decorative painting, I loved it so much and learned quickly that if I wanted to enjoy it for more than 5 min. I had to push aside my need to paint straight lines, or have the "right" colors, or even know all the details of the project.  It allowed me to make several super-creative pieces that I often gave away as gifts.  I noticed that those "mess-ups" that I might find I wanted to point out and apologize for were never noticed by anyone else.

Creation is mess, and almost everything is creation. If it's not creation, it is most likely destruction and we know that is messy. So then if something isn't messy, it's boring and possibly dead. I am grateful to be on the path of making peace with all this. But you know, that too, ain't neat either.