Creativity

I am so happy to be thinking about creativity again.  Seriously.  My dreams brought me back to it.

One night several weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with this thought in my head: "If you don't help Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle promote their Airigami Balloon Adventure, your career will be ruined."  And when my dreams give me messages, I listen. This one was firm and clear and accompanied with some intense insomnia.  So I got up, went to my computer, and began collecting email addresses for school leaders in the school systems in the five counties surrounding Rochester.  And I drafted an email to them about Journey on the Genesee.  And I promised to do more if I was needed.  I listen to my dreams, for they are the deepest truth I know.

I handed out a lot of bookmarks.  I talked about it where ever I went.  I help them back up the media attention they received.  I'm sad to say that only about 20% of the emails I sent out (using MailChimp) were opened.  I'm not sure how else to measure my impact.  But a lot of people attended the event, anyway. 45,000 people, I think.

A different kind of dream then redirected my attention - a dream of achievement.  A dear old friend posted this on Facebook: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/03/creative-genius-driven-by-distraction.html and I gotta say it really turned my head.  I don't remember telling Ryan about my past aspirations to academically study the phenomenon of creativity.  I remember Lorraine offering me a lot of really great advice on how to achieve that dream in the best way possible. I remember Billy Lictor responding to my aspiration by saying he was going to go a PhD in philosophy.  I don't remember telling Lisa,  but she remembers me telling her about it, and reminded me when I wasn't expecting it.  It was exciting to realize that the American Journal of Play might be a outstanding source of inspiration in my work toward the goal.  But I don't remember telling Ryan.  We had fallen out of contact when the dream was fresh, and I gave the dream little thought until he delivered that without even a comment. Sometimes I suspect that powerful forces are at work behind the scenes.  More than once I've suspected that lazy smart guy to be slightly magic.  It seems my friends won't let me forget that dream, which ten years ago, was the biggest dream I could fathom for myself.

Ah, the article.  It isn't even an article.  It is a citation to a journal that I do not have access to.  Basically it says "Science wants to let you know that creative people think differently!" I must read it, and learn more about their measurements.

Then, on a rare morning with a few minutes entirely to myself, I visited Henrietta Public Library.  Sometimes the new nonfiction section at this library seems to have stalked my life and displays at least one book aimed at each of my present interests.  This was one of those days.  I passed over perhaps five books that I might have selected to read if it were not for Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.  Sometimes a book hits you at just the right time, and the impact is gorgeously big and beautiful.  I'm not sure yet if this book serves that need for me, but it did do one thing that has been silently nagging at me.  It got me think in such a way that forced me to write.  This was sorely needed.  I once considered myself a person that must write in order to understand things properly.  In all the turmoil I've weathered these past eight years, I have gotten away from that because I neglected to put words to paper.  I failed to allow my thoughts to take form.  Forgive me if I'm rusty.  My children have taken precedence.

I used to write obsessively.  Constantly.  It was my meditation.  I think lately ideas have been packed in my mind so tightly I'm not even sure how to let them out.  I'm like a joke can of mixed nuts that actually has spring snakes bound up inside.  All the ideas come out at once the moment I try to pry off the lid.  There is much work to be done.

The thing I love best about the book so far is that Gilbert might understand the many aspects to accessing information through thought forms for creative purposes, better than many spiritual students subscribing to the belief that thoughts are things.  (For more on thoughts as physical objects, check out mike Dooley http://www.tut.com/)  She says that in order to be a proper channel, to be selected by an idea as the person to make an actual thing here in our physical world, based on a concept in the spiritual world, we must prove our selves as creators to be hard working and ready to offer our life over to the manifesting of the great big beautiful idea.  Yes.  I haven't created much in recent years because I haven't been in a position to put in the hours needed to give great ideas the life they deserve.  I have been busy creating a foundation for my children's lives, studying libraryland for what it is, and also floundering around like a fish out of water because I've been living in poverty.  And these tangents are valuable because they have given me more than enough material from which I may draw creative ideas to communicate.

Much more to follow.  Stay tuned.

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PS http://www.organizingcreativity.com/