a creative life - what is it?

Before children I could while away hours, even days on some creative whim. The whole process from imagining to production could unfold within a day and the happy mess left behind was proof of pure, uninterrupted "making"  time. Nowadays, creativity doesn't often present itself in neat little parcels of time; an undisturbed few hours when all is quiet and the ideas flow. In fact, I find it very rarely does.  In the early days of motherhood I struggled against time constraints as I held fast to the notion of creativity as art or craft based. And while it definitely fits into traditional pastimes such as sewing, painting, knitting and sculpture, I have come to believe that creativity is so much more.

To me living a creative life has to be a way of daily thinking; a way of being. A challenging of the boundaries of "doing", thinking out of the box and exploring alternatives. To be ever refreshing the mind and allowing new inspiration to subtly mould  patterns of behaviour. The natural world, our own senses, and simply what makes us feel good should be our daily inspiration for expanding our days creatively. Begin observing your day to day movements and ask questions like, "How could I do this differently? How could I change this to make it more interesting? How can I use this differently?" What it?" . A twist on a salad dressing, a walk along an off beat track, bright red lipstick just because, painting that old chair bright teal because it's your favourite colour, a carpet picnic for dinner...

If we cast off the shackles of being creatively competent in an arts manner and embrace novel ways of doing things in our everyday not only will our souls be enriched but our imaginations will ignite. Live life with child like eyes and challenge what's proper, practical and conforming without censorship. Refuse to listen to that annoying little voice that says, "Why?" and silence it with a loud, "Why not?". But mostly, start to play.

Steph x