Change it: “I want to be more creative!”

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. It feels strange for me still, to only be writing one post for all of you in any given week, but I’ll tell you, it’s been a lot easier on my noggin—and I feel like I have more time to really delve into my subject, and really hash out the things I’m talking to you about.

This month, as you’ll know if you stopped by last week, we’re talking about resolutions, and how to make them better. We’re taking some good resolutions, and making them into resolutions that we can attain, ones we can quantify, ones that we’ll stick to because we now understand the meaning behind them and know why we’re putting more effort into these things.

Today?

Change it: “I want to be more creative!”

I love this one. I do. I’ve made this one, for I don’t even know how many years. I make this one probably every other year, and it ends up amounting to nothing. It suffers from a lack of identity, a lack of anything to latch onto or make sense of, and I know we can make it a whole lot better.

It's a good thing, wanting to be more creative. Creativity is something we all need, and something modern education tries to drill out of students (at least in the US). So we have to fight for our creativity, which I think is why so many adults make resolutions out of creativity, out of doing something to exercise our creative minds, to allow ourselves to think in a way we haven’t done in years, even a way to discover parts of ourselves that we didn’t know we had.

It’s a very good idea of a resolution. It’s just not a very good resolution—and for almost the exact same reasons as the resolution we discussed last week.

Okay, so you want to be more creative. What does that mean? What do you want to do, that’s creative? Do you want to start doing pottery? Do you want to draw? Paint? Write? Dance? What does creativity look like, to you? What do you envision, when you think of yourself being creative, this year?

Now tell me why. That thing you’re picturing, why is that what came to mind? Why do you see yourself dancing with sugar plum fairies? Why do you envision yourself with a palette of paint in your hand and a canvas the size of the wall before you? What is it that draws you to this particular creative endeavor, and why do you want to explore this version of creativity, this year?

I’m sure you’ve come up with a lot of different ideas, at this point. So now let’s quantify it.

How much do you want to do? If it’s dancing you’re thinking of doing, then how many hours a month do you want to spend in the studio? How many choreographies do you want to learn? If it’s painting, then what kind of art do you want to be able to create by the end of the year?

Make sure you set yourself a goal that’s attainable, one you know you’ll have time to achieve, or one that will stretch you a little bit. Don’t reach for the clouds, if you know you only have time to reach the branches in the middle of the tree. That tree will give you a boost to get to the clouds, next year.

“I want to be more creative.” I’m glad! I do, too. But let’s change that resolution to, “I will learn how to draw a portrait without a reference photo.”

[love]

{Rani Divine}