CED

CED Check-in August 9th-16th

Another fun week of doing my best to be mindfully creative with Leah Piken Kolidas's Creative Everyday. I've kept up my practice of making 3 pages a day on which to write my morning pages. I'm also still fooling around with the extra paint (my funny fish above is one of the results).

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to be asked to do a reading of a play. I love cold readings (especially if the material is good - and this time it was). You have to just jump in and roll with whatever comes up. There's no second guessing yourself. You have to MOVE with whatever gut emotion comes up.

I was working on a poem that has been rambling around in my head for weeks -BUT - a completely different poem came out. In the poetry department I also toyed with the idea of writing a haiku a day again. I did that once one summer - it was a lovely practice. I'm pretty rusty, it might take me a while to get going again or rather slow down!

Keeping with the theme of MOVE I have been on a cleaning, purging and organizing rampage. It's the organizing part that requires my creativity. It doesn't come naturally. I'll stare and stare at a space waiting for it to tell me how to best organize it. Sometimes, it tells me to just go eat chocolate chip cookies. (I always eat them very creatively and mindfully!!)

CED Check in

I think I might be doing this backwards. I'm posting for what I did last week (August 2-August 9). I just started CED this month and I'm already excited about the many opportunities to be mindfully creative.


Like many people I do morning pages a la Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Over the past several weeks my pages have gone from looking like this:

To looking like this:

Each day I play around with paints, pens, markers and colored pencils and make pages to write my morning pages on the next day. I have many more I'd love to show you but they're filled with pretty personal thoughts so I'll have to wait until I figure out a way to obscure the words a little bit.

As I've been experimenting with painting my morning pages, I frequently wind up with extra paint and it seems such a shame to waste it. One day I noticed a small blank journal on the table and I started to smear the extra paint there. Now playing with the extra paint in my blank book has also become part of my daily ritual.

I've been thoroughly enjoying these practices because I feel no pressure. I'm not making art. In one case, I'm just going to write over the pages anyway and in the other case I'm just using up the extra paint.

In addition to doing these pages each day, I've been up to a couple of other things. On Tuesday and Saturday I helped out some friends who are participating in Project Twenty1. They have 21 days to write, shoot and edit a 10 minute film. I was "the opera ghost" which basically meant I got to wear liquid latex to make me look like a ghoulish creature and pretend to be a ghost. They'd say things like, "Um, what kind of opera would you sing" and I'd make up some operatic sounding song. Or they'd say, "What would you do if someone shined a light on you" and I'd invent some wacky appropriate ghost behaviour. I gotta say, it was fun, mostly because I got to just make stuff up.

On Wednesday I made a full moon dreamboard. I've made vision boards before but this was my first time making one for the full moon and the first time participating in the amazing Jamie Ridler's circle. It's a lovely group and it feels very nurturing to have other women lend support to my intentions and it's also inspiring to witness the aspirations of so many powerfully creative women.

Thursday evening after I finished teaching I sat down and tried to mine a poem that's been sitting at the edge of my consciousness. I sat peacefully and just played with the words. I still don't have a poem but I was very much in the moment as I worked so I really didn't mind. I can't wait to get started on this week.

Mindfully Creative

Sometimes I have difficulty jump starting my creativity but almost just as often I have a hard time turning it off. I become a women possessed spending every waking moment (and many of the moments I SHOULD be sleeping) on my latest project. Soon, I don't even feel "creative" anymore and my life deteriorates to the place where I am eating peanut butter out of the jar for dinner. While it sounds wildly passionate and romantic, it feels awful and out of balance. So, in an effort to live a more fulfilling life I have joined Leah Piken Kolidas's Creative Everyday Challenge. I'm a late comer to the project and I'm only mentally committing to the month of August for the time being.

I think perhaps I will be using the challenge a little bit differently than most. I am going to try to use it to bring more balance into my life. First of all, I will be travelling a great deal during the month of August and that is frequently when my creative path gets derailed. So, I'm hoping that the challenge will inspire me to look for ways to be creative while I'm on the road thus keeping the spark alive. Also, I am going to be selective about what I will label "creative." Vocalzing for an hour won't count, singing from my heart for five minutes will. Blogging until my shoulders are up to my neck won't count, writing a haiku while sitting quietly on my back deck will. Researching poetry for an upcoming project until 3:00am won't count, setting a beautiful table will. I love being absorbed by a project - consumed by the passion. But, I have to admit that sometimes, it exhausts me and the rest of my life crumbles around me. So, I'm going to try this experiment for the month of August and see if I can more mindful about the whole process and invite it into every aspect of my life.