Creativity Mandate
There must be some sort of nesting quality I have that spurs me to "be creative". When I was a kid, my sister and I, when needing a creative fix, declared "Let's do projects". And we did. We'd hunker down and create board games, write poetry, play pretend games, or discover an attic and transform it into a clubhouse. It was so easy to just abandon everything and "do projects". Now that I'm old(er), doing projects has come to mean cleaning out the refrigerator, reorganizing my closet or finding the stepladder so as to replace all the burnt out light bulbs. (side note: think of creative reference for stepladder meaning not your real ladder, but the ladder your other ladder married after divorcing your real ladder. It's not the boss of you and never will be.) Creativity gets squelched when you become a certain amount of "responsible". I guess I have reached that level. Weekends start out being so full of potential, too... Then eventually, thoughts of doing projects gets sucked into the void and replaced with appointments and schedules. I hereby declare a mandate: a creativity mandate. I will create something everyday that is wholly unrelated to responsible, scheduled, committment-type behaviors. Perhaps I will take a photograph or post a blog entry or sew a pillow or write a poem. I may denounce my relationship with my stepladder and disinvite her to the light bulb and smoke detector battery's wedding. Maybe I'll just listen to a favorite song and think creatively for that time. There I have it: Mandated Creativity. I like it.
