A Bouquet for You (Detail) - Greeting card of conte, and pastel drawing, Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008  

Sometimes, it is the simple things that get us moving at light speed. Things like:

• Waking up at the crack of dawn, willingly and eager
• Enjoying a quiet hour in the morning, in the light of dusk
• Completing a set of business tasks (uploading products to website) by the time everyone else is driving into work
• Chatting with friends and making new ones

What is your inspiration for today?

Dad and I (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008  

Today has been a productive day, in the sense that even though I don’t have a “timeline” for the day, I have been utterly productive and timely in my productions.

I am attempting to set weekly goals, and dedicate days to certain tasks. My hope is that by grouping tasks, I’ll see movement and also be able to focus on creating one day, producing another, selling another day, etc. etc. The outline for this blog was started during my lunch break, which I enjoyed on my back deck, surrounded by the grape vine that is growing beyond control as we finally hit the summer heat. It is inspiring to see this vine simply reach for the sun, reaching for life, attempting to grow and reach and just be so lively! I’ll follow its lead and keep reaching for my goals. Actually, this grape vine has been inspiring me for months. I have seen it change from dry wood to a vine that is taking over the deck chair, a leafless plant that now carries budding grapes (perfect for snacking but not wine). It is also a perfect reminder of the seasons – come fall, this vine will have fruit that will finally have reached its peak. The tiny seeds that began their life in March will reach full maturity in October – and I’m thinking maybe my attaining creativity will reach some form of maturity come October. It’s a nice little story I’ve created here.

On another note, my attempt in this blog is to combine the psychological and business elements of someone who is attempting the journey to attaining creativity. It is not just as simple as following business rules and seeing success come your way. The spirit and dedication are also elements necessary for this journey. The psychological aspect is that there are days when I’m down (when trying to leave a voicemail turns into a 60-minute drama because the wrong phone number is listed on a website) and then there are days when I put on my “good” shoes (symbolically) and just tackle the day and end up talking to the cheeriest person on a Monday morning that leaves me with a smile all day long.

Part of this journey is also realizing that the longer I let myself feel beaten, the less I produce or create or enjoy my life. So I may be somber for an hour, frustrated. If so, I give myself time outs – work in the garden, play with the cat, whatever – and then I hit the studio again and create and research where I can sell, etc., etc. If you are working for yourself, perhaps hidden away in your studio, how do you deal with slump or somber days?

Alongside that realization, that I can simply choose to be somber for just 15 minutes and then go on simply with my tasks, I was hoping to provide a link – but it seems like the show’s website I was attempting to link to is skimpy! So to paraphrase: Going into business, or starting the journey to attaining one’s creativity does not have to be hard. Let me continue. The business idea does not have to be rocket science, the start-up fund does not have to be in the millions, and I don’t have to be a genius. If you boil it down to doing something you love, everyday, doing what you love is easy. It’s putting in the effort and time that will be hard (but worthwhile), but the idea itself is simple. You can start a business with $100 and network with your 5 friends to make a go of it.

Another way of looking at it is that I can make going into business difficult (I can butt my head talking with people who don’t understand me or are not providing me with answers to simple questions) or I can go into business and follow the paths that are simple (dealing with people who are attentive and are so good at their jobs that for a split second I think of going back to the “real” career world). I do have a choice in my success and if I wanted to be frustrated every day, I would have stayed put in my cubicle.

If I can share just one thing I have learned in the last couple of months is that once I set my mind to a particular task (for now, let’s say selling in weekly craft markets), I have been bombarded with e-mails from people I don’t even know or have come across articles giving me tips on how to sell at craft markets, or any type of insurance I might need, or names of managers for craft markets. Sure, the difficult part has been following up on all this new information. But I have had so many different solutions become available, that it actually has been fun! Sometimes it is just as simple as putting a thought out there and seeing what comes back. I am usually surprised and wonderfully happy with ALL that comes back.

My challenge to you: do you follow on a business path that has been marked with disaster (unresponsive vendors, delays in customer service, etc.) and hope that in the end things will turn out okay or do you turn your back on negativity (it’s their loss, not yours) and opt to follow the business paths that lead you to helpfulness and attentiveness and stress-free success?  

 Flowers, Anyone? (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008  

I started the day early (thanks to a couple of women who worked together to help me start the day at 5AM) and have just kept going.

I have passed through the emotions of elation (for completing a simple task within a designated time) and extreme fear (I’m considering joining a weekly craft market in Monterey, CA and I am shaking in my boots at the thought). And now, as I have continued to just keep plugging along, the fear of actually selling my wares (and myself) have lessened – but only slightly. 

In the interest of keeping myself sane, at least for the next couple of hours, I am refusing to keep thinking of the possible obstacles. Obstacles like “do I have enough variation of things to sell, how will I display my creations, who will buy my stuff, can I do this by myself?” I am simply deciding that with each nagging thought, I will take a deep breath and think of a solution. It may not be perfect, but as long as I remove the obstacle, I can keep moving forward. And the good thing is that within the next couple of days, as I program my mind to keep thinking up solutions, the perfect answer might just arrive at my door, and I’ll be ready to greet it.

On another note, as I continue to research and read blogs and books and ask other creatives out there for guidance, advice, and feedback, I’ve come across an old acquaintance. Alyson Stanfield, the Art Biz coach, was someone I found on the web years ago (when I made my first attempt at attaining creativity). Through the beauty of the web, where I go to one page and then jump from one link to another page to another page, I found the Art Biz coach again.

And so I’ve been checking out her blog and trying to find the time to enact her suggestions and comments. Today’s topic has to do with blogs, so it seemed appropriate that I dwell deeper into the article and see what I needed to do to “liven” up this blog. The suggestions and comment s are good, and along the similar lines of other “pimping up your blog” entries. Although one of the suggestions is to link up (and I’m doing that right now), the reason why I bring the article itself up is because we can get so bogged down with suggestions and spend time reworking everything that in the end, we don’t get anything done.

I’m more than willing to follow the suggestions the Art Biz pointed out – because they work. But this is something to do moving forward, and to check in with myself and make sure that this is the type of blog that I would like to keep up, and for you to visit. I do know that putting in links will result in more traffic (all those trackbacks, permalinks, etc.) but I don’t want the entries to be just highlighted linkable text either. And since this blog is about a journey to attaining creativity, sometimes there may not be links to put in, since everyone’s experience in regards to attaining their own creativity is just that: their own.

I do look for blogs and websites that inspire me, and by inspiration I mean that they uplift me, or the blogger may be going through a rough time, but they are still expressing themselves so well that I am inspired by how they are still progressing through a dark time. There are of course plenty of websites and blogs that give tutorials and tips about the business of attaining creativity, but I’m not sure yet that I want to overload this blog with all of the “textual” side of creativity.

I am resolved however, to insert how I integrate the non-creative side of this business with the creative journey itself. With keeping my mind open, and in looking for solutions, I bumped into this TV episode and caught at just the right time to hear that I should be saying YES to just doing, even if they are unknown, scary, dark, unknown, scary. Being in the journey to attaining creativity means that there will be plenty of unknowns and if I am to properly continue on this journey, I need to say YES to fear, to doing things outside my comfort zone.

The challenge for you today is: are you willing to say yes to the scary parts of attaining your own creativity? Share your success story of overcoming a fear, big or small.

Photos of today’s inspiration: two bouquets of flowers from around the garden, a scarecrow in the vegetable beds - albeit a bit early for Halloween, Martha the white paw cat makes her blog debut, and what better way to enjoy the late afternoon sun than with a sweet rose wine and some 7-up? Photos by Pia Walker, Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008    

Sunday again (or maybe not), simpler (but not so easy that it’s boring), easier (this one is a keeper), etc., etc.

Without a normal routine (I seem to get in and out of routines and can’t make one completely stick), my weekends have become part of my every day workweek. And I don’t mind that, since I’m doing something I enjoy and I’m passing the hours doing fun and creative things. But it also means that if I come across a creative mess that I can’t seem to get out of, I’m not allowing myself to just veg out for a day of rest (or 2 or 3 days of relaxation).

In my attempts to find my creative path (and the joy there is that I am on the right path and have figured out my style and the colors that make my mouth just smile) I keep bumping into technology. Eons ago, when technology was new and supposed to be helpful, I became one of those semi-geeky people who learned everything there was to know. And I kept learning and adding to my repertoire of technology knowledge for years after.

But now, in the spirit of being more connected, I find it ironic that as I attempt to do everything wirelessly, I am surrounded and strangled with cords! As I move around my drawing desk, grabbing for pastel pencils and different colored papers, my elbows play tango with the earphone wires of the iPod (never mind what happens when I’m dancing solo around the house) and I feel the little earplugs pulled from my ears. As I attempt to transfer digital photos to my computer, my knees need to remain perfectly still so that I don’t knock the camera over.

I recently read another creative’s blog entry about being overwhelmed with technology. I had to reply to her, and smile as I did so, because in this journey to attaining creativity, I find myself spending way too much time keeping up with technology, time that I could and should be spending actually creating. When did this technology, that was meant to be so helpful, become a hindrance? I do find myself, again in my attempts to create a daily or weekly routine, trying to dedicate a day to just techie stuff – blogs, websites, uploading photos, online selling. Otherwise, I find myself remaining stuck to the computer, plugging and unplugging devices, and inside the house, instead of outside getting inspiration for my drawings, my creations.

It could all be as simple as my drawing on a piece of paper and setting up a chair and a table on a busy street to sell my wares. And yet that would be so “unprofessional,” wouldn’t it be? Yet for just an hour or so, I do wish it were that simple and easy.

Here’s to wishing and moving forward regardless.