Finding creative time

What I am writing about today is a comment to Anne Lamott's latest blog on her Facebook page.  You can read the full article here

https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/817214388408206

She says:  the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions—that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.

And of course you cannot "make" time you have to "find time.  I was joking with friend Lou the other day about how I bought a new book on some new art technique and I had been putting it under my pillow trying to absorb it over night.  But then I figured out you actually have to read it and PRACTICE.  Duh.  

What Anne is trying to do is to get us to remember that time is precious and that "creative expression" time is more than precious.  It is essential.  And that time can slip away from us. Which we already know, of course.  But we need reminding!

Most of my friends are "creatives".  In fact for many of us deciding WHICH creative things is the problem.  We want to do so many things.  But that is not really a bad problem, to my mind, as long as one spends enough time with each thing to receive the gift it has to give.  With me the question often is which medium shall I work on today or this week or this month.  And I stave off the temptation to put too many eggs in my creative baskets.  (A good analogy for a Easter blog, right?) However, some would argue you can just get another basket.  And I wouldn't really argue with that.  

My point, however, is that if your studio is just filled with baskets that you flit from one to another frantically than you have created the same time issue you tried to stave off in the beginning!  You need to be able to spend some QUALITY time with each basket and if that become too difficult..give some baskets away.  Pick the baskets that fill your emotional and creative needs the best.

My Zentangle® basket is always near by.  I love my Gelli-arts basket and the mono-printing journaling and collage that spins off it.  I love working with fonts and calligraphy (a new basket for me but one that blends into the others) and I adore my watercolor basket and watercolor sketching baskets. That one is never far away from me.  I play now and then with my basket called "multi-media" which gives me real freedom to "free up my creative juices" and use my journaling to sort of map out that journey.  If I pick a new basket, I sometimes have to put away one of the others for awhile.  The joy in these choices is that they fit the moods.  

Part of Anne's blog suggests that we also need to "get outside the studio often" into nature.  This will inspire your creativity no matter what you like to do.  Whether a walk in the neighborhood or a jaunt down to the river side or beach or woods or….?  I really do agree with her on that one.  

So we are all given the same # of minutes each day.

And I know things interrupt us…family and friends need us and you get a cold and unexpected interruptions just happen.  Excluding those, give some thought today of how you spend your precious creative minutes.  Where could you find some that are being wasted?  (Naps don't count…as they are useful and important.)  I'd love some comments on this.