a background on my 'creative life' in five minutes or less.

I think my heart was specifically designed to love art. I have mountains of journals and sketch books and poems and stories from when I was growing up. I continued to love writing throughout high school and college. I worked at the Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors for three years. I started a jewelry business. My trunk is full of blank canvases. You can find stray paintbrushes in any purse that I own. Sometimes, our house looks like an art gallery. My college notebooks are filled with abstract drawings and fashion designs. However, art takes time, and my current life conflicts with my desire to create.


For example... this is my life lately:
5:45 am. wake up. get ready. eat breakfast (most of the time). make coffee (sometimes). scrape 10 inches of snow off my car (dumb lake effect).
6:20 am. leave for school. teach. lunch. teach. work English lab/detentions/stay after with students.
5:00 pm. run errands. grocery shop. pay bills.
6:00 pm. grade. lesson plan. do Insanity work out. maybe make dinner and watch Glee with roommate before our TV exploded. until...
10:00 pm. bed.

//and repeat. Obviously, little to no time to just create. The best way I can describe it is that my heart is not fulfilled and my soul is not content without art. It's restless. I know that sounds crazy... but art is my life. I love: painting/writing/drawing/cooking/studying poetry/doing photography/decoupaging/sewing/making jewelry. I think art can be anything that's expressive of who you are. It's kind of how I like wearing really crazy, un-matching, colorful outfits. But that's a whole different blog post. (:

I can't explain the way that art makes me feel, other than it encourages me to express emotions that I could not otherwise put into words. It forces me to come face-to-face with my grief, stress, or anger, and somehow provides healing. It allows me to forget about the world and just invest myself in a world I'm creating. Art fulfills a deep need somewhere in me.

So I'm reading this book, Creative is a Verb by Patti Digh, that I got as a gift. It's a lot of creative exercises and ideas that encourages you to "live your whole life as art, not just the bits you draw on a canvas or embroider or sing." Interesting concept. I'm planning to tackle a section of the book every day until I've finished all the "creative challenges." One of the first challenges (found here) is a 31 day writing challenge designed to help you reflect on the past year and look forward to the year to come. Read it and think about joining me in the challenge.


Here's the point of this blog:

• Participate in 31 day writing challenge 
• Share art/writing projects I'm currently working on
• Give ideas for creative challenges or DIY's for you to try, and hear about YOUR ideas
• Interview/talk to local artists or art lovers
• Suggest local activities or events to promote the spread of love for culture/art
• Photograph new jewelry projects and designs before they hit my website
• Post anything creativity-related, really. Photography, sewing projects, recipes, jewelry...

I really made this for me to have a place to foster my creative instincts and projects... but hopefully to inspire someone to tap into an artistic side that has been hidden, pushed aside, or forgotten about.

Patti says it really well in this book: "If you're alive, you're creative...we 'reduce' and 'deflect' our creative selves in many ways. Life is the creative act, not the canvas or the blank page."

What do you need to do so that your life looks like a creative act? Something to think about...