On Friday I wrote as a teacher of young children to parents asking them to step in and help their child's teacher to see that they value the creativity in their child and want it to be nourished and taken care of.
But what about the adults who say their creativity was squelched when they were young and are now afraid to take that first creative step.  What can I say to them?  Empower yourself.  Take time for yourself.  Sit in a quiet room and notice what comes to you.  Take a walk in nature.  What do you notice?  What speaks to you?  Keep a journal, a notebook, draw sketches, paint a small or a big picture, write a poem.  Do it for yourself first and then share it with others if you so desire.  This is your life and you should be the one in charge.  Make time for yourself and your creativity.  Creativity comes in all shapes and forms.  Cooking, drawing, painting, dancing, reading, writing, flower arranging, decorating, acting, and teaching are just a few of the creative ways we express ourselves.  There are as many ways to be creative as there are people.  Take the time to get to know yourself and take the time to not only express the creativeness in you but to cherish and honor it.  If something seems to be missing from your day, maybe it is expressing yourself creatively.  What can you do today that will let your creativity shine through?

Creativity has been on my mind alot lately.  I have also been reading about it, talking about it, and trying to intentionally live creatively.  I keep reading and hearing how schools take the creativity out of us at a very young age.  Is this true?  As a retired teacher it can be, but it does not have to be.  If creativty is important to you as a family, let the school know.  Have your child placed in a classroom with the most creative teacher not the least.  My teaching style was very different than many of the others that I worked with.  Parents who appreciated what I did requested me.  Parents who wanted a different type of teacher, did not.  Let the teacher know how important creativity is to you.  Help with projects if you can.  I think the most important person in your child's life is you.  If you value the creativity within yourself and your child, this passion and love for all things will shine through and make the world a better place not just for you but for everyone.  Is it easy to go against the tide?  Definitely not.  But it is so worth the struggle to be able to live and learn in a creative world.  I would love to hear how you feel about this.

Today Jamie at Wishcasting Wednesday asked, "What do you wish for your home?"  This one is easy and does not take many words, just the right words.  I wish for my home to be filled with only positive energy that encourages and supports everyone who enters to be the happy, healthy, creative person they were meant to be. 

What is creativity?  There are lots of answers this.  To me it is doing something that makes you feel alive and good.  It is solving a problem, taking a picture, writing a story, or painting a picture.  It can be rearranging furniture (something I never do), adding that special scarf to an outfit, or creating something new and different to eat.  It can be looking at life a little differently, seeing the same things through new lenses or totally changing my outlook. 
You can be creative in five minutes or it may take you weeks, months, or years to finish a project. We are all creative beings.  Some of us express that side of our personality more than others.  I would love to hear what makes you feel creative each day.

Creativity still seems to be something that I am thinking about often.  I want to learn what other people do to develop and share the creative side of their personality.  Yesterday my husband and I went to a model boat club meeting.  It was held in a beautiful park on a warm sunny day.  People were walking, reading, playing, fishing and of course running their model boats.  We had never met or even talked to any of the club  members before but they were extremely friendly and so very willing to share their knowledge and their love of model boats with us.  Even though I am never going to build a model boat I really enjoyed meeting people who loved what they were doing and were so willing to share their knowledge and boats with complete strangers.  I am trying to find new and different places to visit this spring without leaving home.  Yesterday was a great beginning to not only seeing our town through new eyes but meeting some very interesting creative people.

Wednesday I posted that I was going to find and enjoy creativity in everything I do.  Although I do believe that you can be creative when you are involved in the simplest task, as I thought about what I wrote, I realized that I  had put an awful lot of pressure on myself.  Why not enjoy the moment without worrying about whether or not I am being creative?  There will be many times during the day that I am creative and I need to just simply enjoy those moments without worrying about them.   I think this may be one reason that I am great at starting a story but never getting around to finish it.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I may disappoint the reader or myself because it just isn't good enough or creative enough. 
So today I know there will be lots of creative moments that I can enjoy and that is exactly what I am going to do.  I am going to enjoy them and not worry about them.
I hope you have an enjoyable, creative, carefree Friday.
 

Each week I participate in Jamie Ridler's Wishcasting Wednesday.  It is a way to take time to think about yourself and how you want to live your life.  This week Jamie asked, "What aspect of your personality do you wish to express more of?"  Sometimes the answers come quickly, sometimes I have to really sit down and thnk.  This week was not so easy but after really thinking my answer would be that I would like to express more of the creative side of my personality.  I have always been known as the "serious one" but there is more to who I am than being serious. I realize that you can definitely be creative and serious at the same time but I would love for the creative side of my personality to bloom and flourish in whatever I do.  I would love to see, experience and enjoy the creative aspect in everything I do each day.  I believe that in order for this wish to come true ( and wishes do come true) I have to take action.  So I will not only notice all of the wonderful opportunities for creativity that are presented to me each day but begin to participate in them fully. What part of your personality would you like to express more of?

Today Chloe our ten month old Bichon decided it was time to get up at 4am.  That's a little too early even for me but when Chloe barks it's time to get up.  So I decided not to waste any of the precious early morning hours and to have a mini artist date at home.  So far this morning I have written one more page in my short story, sketched a picture in my creative journal and now I am writing my post.  I missed my artist date this week which I don't like to do.  Going out, looking for beauty, doing something special for myself, and learning new things makes me feel good.  So what started out as me thinking and saying, "Oh no, it's way too early to get up turned into a special way to start the day!"  If something unexpected or unplanned happened to you this weekend, I would love to hear about it. What made you smile?
PS  The picture really doesn't have anything to do with the post.  It just makes me smile.

It is hard to believe that it is a week since I have posted anything. Although I don't post everyday, I do want to write more than once a week.  So I think I am going to change my wish.  I want to write more, post more and communicate more with people who are also blogging and writing.  I wish to dare to become more involved in my craft and share my creativity with others.  It is interesting that this is not at all what I was going to write but once I sat down this what came and what feels like the perfect wish for today.

Today's prompt was both easy and difficult. It is very easy for me to say, "I want to stop feeling that I am responsible for everyone else's happiness."  It is so hard for me to do.  When I was little my mother used to tell me, "You can't make everyone else happy, so make yourself happy and you will have pleased someone."  I thought that was incredibly selfish but now I realize, at least intellectually, that I can't please everyone nor can I really make others happy.  But there many days that I still keep on trying and this can be exhausting.  So I would like to begin to put myself first.  Even writing that was hard to do so I realize that for me this will not be easy.  But if I begin today, one step at a time, hopefully it will become easier. So today I would like to put down the burden of always making other people happy and to start thinking  of my own happiness more.