Survival Kit No. 1: Creativity

I feel like a main theme of my life has been the gradual return to creativity that I naively abandoned as a 13 year old girl (more on that later). I think my journey back started around 10 years ago and more often than not has involved me slowly inching my way up the down escalator at rush hour. Sometimes I've skipped all the way to the top, artfully avoiding the flood of people heading in the right direction, only to get distracted and find myself frozen to the spot as the escalator carries me all the way back to the bottom again, travelling backwards all the way. Other times I've doggedly trod water on the bottom step as I aim for the top but manage only to not fall off the bottom. On a few, ever-so-rare, occasions I've scampered up and down the escalator like a giddy fool having the time of my life and enjoying the bemused attention of onlookers. Well I could go on with this escalator analogy all day but eventually my fear of falling over on escalators will rear it's ugly head and I'll be telling you all about my 'being eaten by the teeth at the bottom of the escalator' daydream that I have to supress *every single time* I step onto one ... shudder!

This first survival kit is a place for me to dump all the things that aided me in my creative recovery. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to organise things but I'll start by telling you about the people who have been the hugest influence on me over the past decade and we can go from there. I'll order it alphabetically just so there's some kind of order as I add more and more :-)

Anaïs Nin - On a fateful valentine's day in 1998 my beloved gave me a copy of Delta of Venus. Something about it unlocked a part of me that I had buried deep inside and I started writing poetry again.

Natalie Goldberg - some strange serendipitous path led me to a book stall at the 1998 WOMAD festival ... through my 'all day spent drinking' tipsy state of mind I was somehow drawn to buy a small book called 'Writing Down the Bones' ... reading it was like coming home to me, simply life changing.

My blogging dilemma

Given that one of the gods of creativity will soon be darkening the doorstep of my much-neglected blog I have been racking my mind as to how I can get into the blog habit. I think I've realised that unless I am unemployed I will always struggle to balance work, loafing and sleeping with posting to my blog despite my very best intentions. Happily I've got past the point where I feel like I'm failing because I'm not posting everyday or weekly or regularly or at all for months on end ... I no longer equate my blog with all the many, many, many started-but-never-kept-up-for-more-than-a-few-days diaries of my childhood and adolescent years ... but having said that I still have a burning aspiration that involves blogging as a kind of online archive of what I thought and did over the years. After much humming and hawing I think I might have struck on a way of blogging that will keep me guilt free and will allow my blog to grow in a way that means something to me.

So, ladies and gentlefolk it is without futher ado and immense pleasure that I present to you the ever-expandable Creating in the Dark Survival Kits. The idea is that I'll start a blog entry for each survival kit and keep adding to the same entry every time I come across a new gem to add to the treasure chest. Really they will be survival kits for me because I am forgetful about how much joy there is in the world and this will be a place for me to remind myself what is so lovely about being on my journey on the days when I forget.

My first survival kit will of course be creativity ... let the great 'blogging for procastinators' adventure begin :-)

Making space for art

After many, many, many months of wanting (hoping, meaning, planning) to go to ArtSpace in York I finally did it! I went with a couple of friends on Friday which is their 'Art Jamming' night with music, wine and everyone enjoying making art. I've had a painting in my head for ages that was inspired by a photo I saw on Swirlygirl's blog (damned if I can find it now) so I had a go at painting that ... here's the result:



It started off life the other way up as lights hanging from the night sky but I like it this way - one of my friends said it looks like futuristic trees and I think she has a point :-)

Hostess with the mostess

A few weeks ago I was reading my weekly dose of creativity inspiration from Eric Maisel. When I got to the end of his newsletter there was an intriguing update note at the end which read:
"So far hosts have come forward for about three weeks of the Van Gogh Blues virtual book tour (a tour that goes from blog to blog). Please think about hosting me, even if you don’t have the most active blog in the world, as hosting me on the tour will increase exposure for your blog (the tour creates that kind of synergy) and may give you the impetus to begin or resume your blogging. So drop me an email if this intrigues you — I hope it will!"

I normally wouldn't give this sort of thing a second glance but something about it did intrigue me (especially the bit about not having to have the world's most active blog) and after a tiny bit of procrastinating I swallowed down all my doubts and emailed Eric to offer my blog as a host ... and he accepted my offer!

So on Saturday 9th February I will be hosting Eric Maisel's book tour for his 'Van Gogh Blues' book! I have no idea what is involved but I'm looking forward to finding out :-)

Illustration Friday: Rejection

Life is mega hectic at the moment but I had to make time to do a quick illo for this week's challenge (as it was me that suggested the word many moons ago) ...

Slight return no.2

Yesterday I got a very pleasant surprise in my inbox ... a word I suggested for Illustration Friday has been chosen for this week's challenge ... and given that the word I suggested was 'rejection' I think challenge is probably the right word :-} My first thought was 'shucks, that's cool' ... followed very quickly by my second thought which was 'aaagh, I haven't posted to my poor neglected blog for ages and all the nice people at IF who venture onto my blog will be disappointed by the dusty words and pictures they find languishing in this forgotten corner of cyberspace'. So I thought I'd write a welcome note to let any new visitors know I'm still very much alive :-) The reason my blog hasn't been touched since last October (yikes) is that I am now a total Flickr addict - you can see my stuff here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/creatinginthedark/

The funniest thing about my word being picked is that I made the suggestion many, many moons ago as a reaction to receiving a rejection letter for a job I'd applied for back in February 2005 ... you can read my blog post on the topic here.

So anyway here's to pleasant surprises and breathing new life into old blogs :-) Have fun with this week's challenge and I can't wait to see how you creative bunch react to it ... hell I might even give it a go myself - only fair I suppose :-)