Today is Friday, November 12, 2010. I get up every morning and check my email and look at my calendar to see what I'm supposed to do today. Nothing at all on today's agenda! It really looks just like this! (Well, I cleaned out the rest of my calendar before I took a snapshot!)
I decided I just couldn't be "creative" today after the mess I made yesterday.....and decided to work on genealogy. You know I'm working on this huge, monster of a project called the Cotopaxi Colony.....and I have to say, it has been a fabulous day. I made so much wonderful progress.....I'm absolutely thrilled with my findings!
Genealogy is creativity in a completely different way......creative research. I think it uses the same set of skills that an artist uses. Research requires that you forget everything else in life and step outside of the left side of the brain and over into the right side and view what you see in as many different "lights" as you can.....from as many different angles as possible.
I'm researching 17 different households, a total of 67 individuals. And I simply got so involved today that I lost complete track of time. I truly left "this" world of left brained business and stepped into my right brain and lost complete track of everything around me. The very same thing that happens when I paint, or I'm creative with paper, art, ink, stamps...and Kerry comes in and says he'd like to go to lunch and then to Costco. Hmmmm....back to the real world.
At lunch, I'm telling him all the things I want to do "tomorrow" to get ready for the weekend. For whatever reason, even though I looked at the calendar this morning and I saw that it was Friday, Nov 12, my brain decided we were still living in yesterday! (Is it because the entire day was so messed up?) I mentioned something about going to a movie on Friday and Kerry looks at me and says, "Sweetie, today is Friday!" I was completely dumbfounded! I started to argue with him....but I knew he was right. Once again, I have lost a complete day out of my life! I think I'm getting too old for this!
Since TODAY is Friday and tomorrow is Saturday (already) I will really try to be creative paper-wise tomorrow and get back to my envelope/pocket project. And I've decided that as I share the creative process, I'm going to take time out to share "the-creative-process".....what happens to the brain when we create.
And in that process, we might come to understand why, as artists, we often lose a whole day, lose hours on end, lose track of time....and I think in the end process, we might come to see just exactly why art heals!
If you've never experienced being completely lost in your "right" brain.....you really have something to look forward to. If you've been completely lost, you will laugh at my stories!
In the meantime, I'm exhausted. I lost a whole day and that means I lost a whole night of sleep! I think I need a nap!
1 comment:
I'm LMBO because I know EXACTLY what you mean about losing track of everything else (especially time) when you are working on genealogy. I to have lost whole days--I just keep moving forward ("backward") wondering what I will find around the next corner. What one finds makes it absolutely worthwhile and rewarding. Tomorrow will be here too soon!
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