Creating

by Deborah

Emily's original artwork for our company

The purpose of our company, Doodlebugheart, is to help women reveal their inner life to themselves through artistic exercises, to connect with one another, and to nurture their creativity.  This blog is an extension of our work, a place for readers to get to know Emily and I more personally, and hopefully to embody the messy journey of self-knowledge through creative process.  Pretty loose parameters for a blog, really.

I must confess to a certain self-consciousness about my posts lately, however.  (And good grief, could there be anything more self-absorbed than a blog post about your own blog posts?!)  I envy Emily's consistency in posting about crafting and products and events, and it seems to me she is so outstanding about being warm and inviting while staying on message.  Whereas I, at least recently, have been heavy on the personal, and light on the crafty. 

I can't really post about crafts right now, though, because I am not crafting.  At all.  My life has just been too chaotic and exhausting for the last few months. I miss it, though, and now that I've unpacked most of the boxes, I at least have my crafting materials on hand again, albeit piled in labyrinthian, unorganized heaps around my office.  I long to begin losing myself in the process of making something, making missteps and surprising myself, getting frustrated, getting relaxed, the feeling of satisfaction it always imparts.

My carrier full of craft supplies

So my contributions here right now can't be about the latest events or my latest crafts or even my latest inspiration.  But surely there are some of you out there who aren't crafting right now either.  I know many of you are committed artists.  But I know there are also those who have never crafted, too strongly enmeshed in the belief that "I'm just not creative."  There are those who suspect they are creative and would love to try a craft project but who just don't know how or where to start.  There are those who used to create when they were younger, but who have stopped because of the demands of their life.  There are those of you who are artists but who are blocked.

I am representing that part of you.  I love to create, and know that it is essential as breathing at some level.  Sometimes, however, creativity is not about painting or paper or music or poetry or anything we normally deem artistic.

If you are alive, you are creative.   You are creating this moment, and the next one.  We choose, consciously or unconsciously, in every moment of our existence, what to do or not to do.  That is creating.

So my creativity right now is expressed in my life, and not in a journal.  It is finding a way to entertain my two daughters every day.  It is figuring out how to prepare a meal that's tolerably tasty and healthy in the next 30 minutes.   It's deciding where to put that bowl and that picture and that book.  It's thinking up a name for the puppy.  It's in every little decision of my daily life where I try to make things a tiny bit more beautiful for myself and my family.

Beauty can be so simple

I wholeheartedly encourage crafting projects, and think we need more of that in our lives, not less.  Sometimes, however, we need to honor the creativity that already exists in our lives in order to increase it.

Tell me how you are creative today, and keep looking for ways to express yourself.  I promise to do the same.