How to Weave Creativity Into Your Life in 5 Easy Steps

 

Yes, you can do this: take those small lost moments and turn them into an Artful Life

 

I built my creative muscle over the years through working it out regularly, much as an athlete works out. I spend time at it, much of it sliced in and of my everyday life. Yes, I have sacred, set apart time, but most of the time I create in the midst of the everyday-ness of being a woman: a mother, an artist, an entrepreneur, someone who keeps a home.

Last night during a slice of time after dinner my command to create was all about circles. “Draw circles, fill the page with circles,”  the book almost shouted into my mind.

I am working through an “anyone can draw” book originally written for children. The book has the voice of my Mrs. Sopronik, my Girl Scout leader from Troop 11 in 1972 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

Naturally I never said no to Mrs. Sopronik so I did what the book instructed me to do. I drew circles. I noticed when I drew a circle from top to bottom from right to left and up the circle was slightly different than when I took it from the bottom and went right to left and down.

Who said drawing circles had to be boring?

This morning I had eight minutes until Emma was to leave to go to another day at lovely, very confident Bakersfield High School.

I used those eight minutes to begin scribing a found poem.

I pulled a page from a book and started circling words, thus writing a found poem. I was using the prose of a spiritual writer named Barbara Marx Hubbard. I had never heard of her until I pulled a random page from a book sitting on my shelf to write this poem. Eight minutes later I had circled all my words before circling Emma to start her day, this only September 26 of her Junior Year, my only September 26, 2013 ever. I took some photos on campus of Bakersfield High. I shot the choir window commanding S-I-N-G. I shot the water tower that could only be read from the inside unlike Tulare High School’s water tower that shouts to the world “Tulare, We’ve got it!”

I came home. I wrote a bit. I started laundry. In small slices of eight minutes and ten minutes I continued to play with the poem Barbara and I scribed together. I first made an abstract slice of life, country day sort of image and then I added it to one of the pieces of wood I always leave lying around for any creative whim that strikes my fancy.

It is now well on its way to becoming a one-of-a-kind work of art.

Right as I wrote this, my timer went off. Yes, I work through my day sometimes with a timer so that I can get everything done on my sometimes thicker than time to-do list.

I review, briefly, my initial intention:

To illustrate how to build your creative muscle in small slices, every day, amidst your other activities.

1. Be ready. Have supplies nearby, perhaps squirreled away in drawers or disguised as simple pencil holders.
2. Be willing to see everything as a possible creative subject. Windows, water towers, dumpsters, your ordinary city streetscape when the day is new.
3. Stay focused. Someone tried to get me out of my chair between 6:52 and 7:00, but I was busy building a poem with Barbara’s generously offered words. I did not move. My children are fairly well trained to leave Mommy be when she is creating. There was an 18^th Century poet who would put her apron over her head to let her seven children, always underfoot, to let Mommy have some “quiet” time for writing.
4. Use a timer to train yourself. I literally set five minutes on my phone clock timer. Use your kitchen timer. If your mind says, “I have too much to do!” set the timer to five and feed your heart with any creative process, even if it is rearranging a drawer artfully. It is your choice to live artfully. It is your choice to live ART Fully.
5. Be grateful for each sliver of an hour you are able to use for your creative process. Don’t expect finish, expect a continuation. It’s sort of like flirting moving into full fledged romance. Take your time, engage, move away and come back later, refreshed, with your make up and a big smile across your face.

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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