Tag Archives: Creativity

Time to Flex My Creativity Muscles . .

02 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Change, Creativity, Gardening, Happiness, Inspiration, Opportunity, Outdoors, Purpose, Surprise, Uncategorized

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I’m going to take on a little bit of salvage and repurposing, it’s time to flex my creativity muscles! It’s not something I get to do every day, but I feel prompted to try after the completion of a household project! After having a tune-up and refresh of the outdoor, in-ground pool, I have a used fiberglass filter pod leftover. Now, it’s not an item of beauty, to say the least! It’s big, beige, round, with points of entry for various tubes and a piece removed on top where my pool man gained access to remove the sand which was held inside. To replace the filter with a new one means that a whole new pod has been located in the very spot this one sat, filled with clean, new sand and ready to begin a renewed phase of pool usage. So, with the old sizeable pod sitting there staring at me, I felt compelled to be creative and to discover a new use for it! Rather than seeing it find a home in some landfill, there must be a way to make this lackluster gizmo shine with reuse!  

It’s not the first thing I’ve nurtured into a new life. Last year, I took on the remodel of an antique wheelchair which was rusty, partially disassembled and rather ugly. It was purchased at a flea market years ago, almost forgotten, it sat in my outdoor shed for years. Now its wood seat, back, and arms gleam with coats of protective spar varnish, a cushion sits upon the seat for comfort. It’s useful in a new way, fortunately not as it was originally intended! After all, I would much rather not need a wheelchair anytime soon! It will never be perfect, but for my taste, it’s a charmer as an extra seat!

And so, I endeavor upon the repurposing of this strange pod-shaped thing. It’s not heavy, so I’ve moved it safely to another area of the yard until I figure out what it’s meant to be. It might be a water feature, as I can imagine all sorts of plumbing opportunities, given the natural openings it already has. Or it might become a planter of sorts, as it surely is a container of sizeable proportions. I might turn it into part of my edible garden next year, perhaps tomatoes or melons will find it a delightful growing space! Needless to say, it’s going to be reused. I just have that itch within to turn it into something unique! I’m pretty sure whatever I do, no one else will have the exact same “whatever”! 

That’s the fun of gardening and outdoor spaces for me! I’m not one of those people who want everything to be perfect and just so, as I realize life and all living things are never perfect. It’s the imperfections and the individuality of each person’s personal patch of nature that makes it special! In this domain of mine, I can paint a landscape of color, texture, and beauty all my own! And this pod will soon find a home among the plants and other elements which make up my landscape. I look forward to the dreaming, designing, planning, and implementation! It’s all part of the fun of creating!

 

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LEARNING AS WE GO

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in God

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LEARNING AS WE GO

I wish I knew then what I know now.  I didn’t, and so, I made mistakes, I lived my life with a flawed sense of reality, sometimes quite selfishly focusing on all the wrong things, the things which don’t really matter when it comes right down to it.  But you know, I suppose that is what separates me from sainthood, I didn’t know, I wasn’t perfect, and all I could do was the best I knew to do when I knew to do it!  Lighten up . . . we are imperfect creatures, designed with flaws, made in flesh with all too human characteristics.  We hurt, we bleed, we covet, we need.  But we can strive to be better each new day, to do better each new year of this life.  I am not where I want to be yet, but I’m headed in the right direction, facing my demons, conquering my enemy fears, and looking for my dreams!
When we make mistakes, do we know that we have two choices?  We can forgive ourselves, as easily as we would probably forgive our friends or family theirs, or we can harbor the harm as though it has ownership on some part of us.  It is often the case that we mold ourselves around our upsets, shape our lives to fit our troubles and create new forms out of the dented clay we have battered in just being humans.  Is that fair?  Does anyone deserve an onus of responsibility which requires perfection?  I have set such lofty standards, that I almost made it impossible at times to exist in this world with my portfolio of follies, those things which I would label the collective mistakes which altered my life significantly.  No, in terms of the world’s turning, they are not earth-shaking, but for my life, perhaps I would have had an entirely different life had I not made these mistakes or lived with these choices.  Can we go back and change the past to ease our burden of guilt?  No  . . . we are left to process, to forgive ourselves our failings and to proceed.  Failing at something doesn’t make us failures as human beings.  It is not the case.  If I cannot come to terms with that significant difference in defining my life, then I cannot move onward to the future with peace of mind.  And I must!  That is what I must do.  I must move forward, so I must forgive myself for being human.  If God can and does forgive me, why can’t I forgive myself?  I must!!

Learn to be all too human, it is what God made you to be.  You are not the exception to the rule, but just another one of us, doing your best each new day!  Let go, trust in God, and try to do better and be better each morning.  But, remember as you live your life, you will make mistakes, you will fail along the journey, you will suffer disappointments and you will let people down.  That doesn’t make you a failure, nor does it destroy your life.  You must forgive yourself, just as you would ask God or others to forgive you, let yourself find a kind and loving heart waiting there within to give nurturing back to yourself!  It’s the requisite condition of our very human design. 

 

Dry Spells

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Life

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Dry Spells

Dry spells, we all have them.  Our creative energies fizzle, our ideas die on the vine, producing no fruit.  We are at a loss for words, we cannot come up with thoughts worthy of expressing and we seem at some miserable place of low creative juices.  Simply put, we haven’t a desire to share our spirit!  It’s not feeling that sociable!  I have been stuck in such a period for about six months now, unable and really unwilling to share a thought, an idea, longer or more productive than a sentence, for fear of exposing my situation.  I was going through something emotionally draining, quite stressful and not all that inspiring!  I didn’t feel like being motivational, nor inspirational, and I would have considered it disingenuous to have been considering myself at a thoughtful place when in fact I was not!  Life is like that, we all go through it, and we are not always able to escape emotional impacts from storms we must weather.  

A good thing to note, the storm will pass, whether on our time or not, it always will eventually leave us again, and then we are free to feel inspired by life, seeking a way to share a bounty of hopeful and purposeful thoughts from our once-again inspired spirits!  During this time, I tried at high periods to write my thoughts down.  I would begin what I thought was a decent discourse from my heart, only to realize somewhere before too long that I was in fact lost in the issues which were pressing upon my heart.  We cannot fool our hearts, our souls, our spirits!  They are the core of our beings, and reflect who we are most aptly and most often.  We are able, like good performers, to wear disguises and hide our true natures, but when a problem presses down our souls with unimaginable weight, we cannot deceive ourselves of the burden!

I suggest letting the writing of your thoughts go, until you can be sure it is from a place of wholeness, wellness and happy contentedness!  Then it means something!   I am happy to be feeling somewhat expressive of late, although I still have to rally myself to be disciplined enough to write.  Some people exude thoughts and write them down as though they are very prolific, but then again, maybe at this time, nothing is pressing down upon them either!  Let your spirit have its space in life, don’t push yourself to be or to do what you cannot be or do!  Be yourself by doing what you want to do!!  Be real and be truthful, live defiantly as the best you you can be!  When and if you hit a dry patch of creative ideas, give yourself permission to rest in that time until the ideas flow once again!  And they shall, it’s inevitable! Go with the flow!