the inner child (a talk about living a creative life)
Last week, I unloaded a whole lot right here on my blog. Everything that went down (and up and back down) during fourth year is up for all to see. This makes me feel both anxious and excited. Anxious because duhh and excited because, I wrote, I shared, and I put it behind me. So yeah I'm pretty excited! On my instagram @simplybusimee, I declared the month of May, the Month of Creative Projects. It's the month of working with poetic words, paint brushes, sparkles and magic. It's working hand in hand with your inner child and whipping up something mesmerizingly beautiful. Mesmerizingly you!
This month I'm re-listening to Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (Yess, she wrote Eat, Pray, Love, my fav novel). This book/guide helped me shake up my content, stay true to my writing, and speak creativity's language. This blog post is all the lessons I've learned around creativity; how to spark a creative mind, creating a creative atmosphere and how to become best buddies with your inner child. At this point in my blogging journey, I'm going to stop apologizing for being cheesy, I know it's cheesy, so let's just dive right into it!
List the things you're passionate about. List the things you would do for free if you could. List the things you can do all day long. You can lose track of time doing. It can be skating, knitting, baking, etc.
Know that you are a creative being. Despite popular belief, we are ALL designed to create, to invent, to produce, to change. We can't possibly work on a project or walk this earth without altering it, even just a smidge. Even if you're following your parents footsteps who followed their parents footsteps, you owe it to yourself to put your own twist on things.
See yourself doing what you love to do. Visualize carving time out of your day to do what you love to do, the way "creativity" wants you too.
Follow "creativity". Don't think about ideas, let the ideas come to you. Let creativity speak to you. Let it send you the painting for you to draw and the novel you should write and the very words you should speak.
Don't sensor. Inviting creativity in your life and in your day, only to cut and paste certain parts, is a waste of both of your times. Feel everything, consider everything and share everything. That's probably when I write the most meaningful things; when I write the truth and the whole truth.
Do not be fearless. Do not be fearless or you'll do stupid things. But consider your rational anxieties and fears and let them take the backseat and never ever let them drive!!! Liz Gilbert explains this as the proper way to create alongside your fears about money, time and every other excuse. Do not drop your law degree to pursue acting full-time at your local theater, but listen to your fears and consider everything before signing up to become a starving artist.
Ideas will leave you my dear. Unfortunately you are not that special. If you don't do it then someone else will. That's how the universe works, it will not wait for you to retire, have more money or time, or be thinner. If you have an idea, go for it! Or we'll find ourselves blaming others for "stealing" the ideas we were going to go through with...eventually.
Creative energy yearns for a creative being. Stay active, stay passionate and stay creating. Constantly have a creative mind. Meaning even the way you think should be out of the box. Ask yourself "What if?". Not what if it's stupid or they laugh or it's a complete disaster. Ask a "What if this turns out amazing?", "What if this is not a complete disaster?", "What if, and stay with me here, I'm actually good at this?". Curiousity and creativity are friends and the more you aim to be creative, the more of it you will receive!
Set up a work space and schedule. I practice writing on my blogs, but also every morning when filling out my gratitude journal and my weekly journal. I listen to music, light a candle, have my breakfast in front of me, am wearing comfortable clothes and am super present and focused on what I love. Time, place and a positively charged space is key!
"A master was once a dedicated beginner". Your day 1 is not going to match someone else day 100. I've been doing yoga for almost two years now (and almost everyday) yet there are still sooooo many things I have no clue how to do. I'm not hung up on the yogis on instagram but am inspired, because they too did not emerge from the womb with the ability to press their knee to their nose while balancing upside down on one foot! Understand that, accept that and expect that and you'll have a funner time creating!
Listen to music. Make playlists for the activity, as motivation, as a cool down and let it guide your thinking mind.
Done is Done. Your first project will be awful, your first blog post will be grammatically flawed and you will want to burn your first draft and crawl in a hole. Trust me. But don't. It's part of the process. Write, play, sing, edit, record, produce and love your heart out and then release it to the universe. There is still so much we don't know and we can't expect that we'll have all the answers the first time around. Expect embarrassment and mistakes, again it makes the process funner.
Your art is not your baby. It's not all of you. It's not a make it or break it thing. Don't put so much pressure on it or it stops becoming art. It stops becoming fun.
The Parent Factor. I'm all for finger-painting rainbows and unicorns all day, despite being raised by serious university enthusiasts, because they are also musicians and big believers in destinies and having fun with life. For those who's parents disapprove or maybe you're the no-fun-having "parent" in this scenario; lighten up, loosen your bone and tap into your inner child. Why? Because there is just no other way to live. Don't be the helicopter parent, monitoring, double-checking, killing the fun and creativity, but be the child. Aim to be the high-spirited, high vibe, wide-eyed kid.
I didn't want to jinx my creative projects so I wanted to keep to myself about it, till now *drumrolllll* I am working on a little project known as a novel. Who's to stay how long it's going to be when it's done, when exactly it will be done or who exactly will be able to hold it. But ideas have found their way to me and since then I have done nothing but write with great joy. I am sharing this to 1. Let you know that we're in this together and 2. To shout from the mountain tops (or blog) to the universe that we are still out here waving our creative wands, sparking up magic and tapping into our inner child for the sake of living intentional and creatives lives.