A Mystery..... Solved!

When I wasn't reading this week...  I painted letters for my daughter's bedroom, hung curtains, and much, much, more!

My little book reading confessional, this is.  Yoda speak, I know.  Divulgences, I sow. 

My little spiel this week is about creative madness, and moreover, the fact that I didn't finish reading a book.  I'm only on page twenty-five of the one I chose.  My love for this book was reciprocated, however, when I came across the following quote:

"We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness--either enforced or voluntary." - Agatha Christie

The creative madness I've been dealing with over this last week came to a head, and the head finally had to drink in some kind of catharsis, or it was quite literally going to blow.  I've got so many, many, many balls in the air juggling right now, and they all feel so incomplete, malnourished, premature, etc., etc., etc.  I've gotten to know this feeling over the years, even if it is quite...disquieting.  I've learned how to comfort it, nurture it, sit with it, play companion to it until it relaxes and allows creativity to flourish into the being I'm yearning for.  This book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor, is reminding me to take the time to do so.  Even though I haven't finished the book, I've gone back to it several times to become awash again in one blissful realization in the opening pages.  This realization is that the tension I'm experiencing while working on many of my projects can be called "creative tension."  Additionally, if I can just learn to sit at home in the roller-coaster feeling of it...  the castles I'm constructing at home will be brought to manifestation.  My hands will find their way in the creative act.  Inspiration will settle upon my brow.  The muses will sing to me.

Funny enough, there's a section in one of my research textbooks which sings a similar melody to the tune of this book on creativity.  The author there takes a sidebar moment to urge the undertaking of many different creative endeavors at once, so that focusing on one doesn't become too overwhelming, stale, draining, etc.  What may seem idle, or called idle in the mentioned quote from Highly Creative Women, is an illusion.  In this modern world obsessed with instant gratification, fast-serving technology, and capitalistic venturing forth, it's easy enough for me to feel frustrated that I'm not seeing the fruitful outcome of my endeavors.  It makes me feel as if I'm not working.  And that's just wrong.

Highly Creative Women sets me right again.  I'm so relieved that I've had it as my companion this week.  The author/researcher for this book took her compilation of forty-five interviews with successful, creative women and turned it into manna this week for me.  It will serve as such for many, many months to come.  There are two featured women I'm especially grateful to hear from within these pages: Sarah Ban Breathnach and Clarissa Pinkola Estés. 

Sarah Ban Breathnach is the author which brought that beautiful pink book of daily inspiration to women, encouraging the embrace of: gratitude, simplicity, order, harmony, beauty, and joy.  She did this in her book Simple Abundance.  I still read my copy my mother bought me years ago.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés is another one of those authors every woman should read up on and my copy of her Women Who Run With the Wolves is enshrined on my sacred shelf of books.  She brings a singing voice to the soul of female, conducting such a meaningful melody for each pace a woman takes in the journey of her life.

I've got some great companions with me in this book right now in my time of creative tension.  The voices are comforting.  And although I haven't finished reading it, all my creative efforts are applauded.  Regardless of the fact that the outcomes of my creative endeavors haven't arrived yet, the voices in this book speak to me their knowing of my efforts.  Loved, I am.  Blessed, I am.  Finish this book, I will.  More enriched upon completion of it, I will be.

When I wasn't reading...  in between cooking up all the batches of projects in the works, I found another creative project...  This is the "before" picture of the little bistro I'm going to find inspiration to come to the point where there's an "after" picture.