I wanted to post a picture of my freshly painted kitchen yesterday, but due to some severe Omega-3 deficiencies in my brain (thanks Bumpkin!), I forgot my phone that had the photos on it. (Amongst other vitally important things and information!)
So – anyhoo. Here is a photo of my freshly painted kitchen for you to all ‘Ooooh and Ahhhh’ over. As you can see – I don’t even have all our crap in the shelves yet!! I imagine it will start looking a little more cluttered once that junk reinstalls itself. Oh – and just to give you a little idea about the colour the walls were before we painted? Check out the plastic bag colour hanging on my pantry door. That precise colour. Oh yes – it was that attractive.
It seems that at the moment – if I am not painting our unborn child little canvases for it’s bedroom, I’m painting kitchens. I do have high hopes of possibly painting the hallway over the next week or two – but we’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, it’s now November and I should really forget the whole painting buzz, and focus on gettin’ Nano’d instead.
I realise that I have been slightly useless with Monday Musings recently – and that I should have posted one yesterday! You know what? Completely forgot. Actually – I completely forgot it was even Monday, because it’s a public holiday here in New Zealand. So, it did not even cross my mind until I walked through the office door this morning, and voila! Magically, I remembered that it was Tuesday, that I had missed Monday, and that I only have a four day work week. A very sad fact was that I felt excitement because I only have to work four days!
Having a long weekend is a great way to get rid of your bad juju, and actually feel a little revived without going on a big holiday. Now we are on the downward slope to Christmas holidays. And right in amongst everything is NaNoWriMo, which will make it all come round even faster.
So, here are my musings for the moment.
- I didn’t manage to get any writing related work done in the weekend, and I feel guilty! I know. This is technically the third weekend in a row. The first weekend, I was at my friend Cassie’s place. The second weekend – staying with my Mother…. This weekend was a long weekend, and I managed to stay home and get no writing done! I honestly have no idea where the time went.
Bumpkin’s new paintings and armchair
- Apart from the fact that I spent a lot of time planning for our unborn child. Like buying it a ‘nightlight’ lava lamp. (Oh, how very kitsch.) Or my mother in law buying it a little armchair for its bedroom. Or even painting it some animals on canvas for its bedroom… Please bear in mind that I haven’t actually painted anything for about 2 years. In fact, there is still a half finished painting sitting in one of our bedrooms that I keep meaning to ‘get around to’ one day.
- I’m pretty excited about doing my iNaNoWriMo challenge this November. I’m really really looking forward to getting into some decent writing and editing routines. This has been seriously lacking in my life lately.
- New Zealand is chuffed with itself. Absolutely over the moon. Everyone is celebrating. Why? Because we just won the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Not only did we manage to host this enormous event for the past six weeks, we managed to beat France by one point on Sunday night! Needless to say, the majority of New Zealand were hungover yesterday from all the celebrating. And the celebrations will continue throughout this week as well. They always say that the All Blacks are the most revered and talented rugby team in the world, but yet we haven’t managed to win a world cup since 1987.
And on that note – here is a song for our beloved All Blacks, for a job well done. I raise my Mocktail to them!
I was talking to my Dad the other night about this exact subject, and felt that it was relevant to talk about it here as well. There is so much that I could say about on this subject, but I’ll keep it short.
My siblings and I were lucky enough in our childhood to be raised by parents who celebrated creativity. Every creative endeavour that we undertook was nurtured, grown, and raised to maturity by us and our parents. We are incredibly lucky. Our parents told us that we could do absolutely anything in the world that we wanted, and that it was up to us to make that happen. They never dreamt of us being ‘realistic’ and becoming an accountant, lawyer, or doctor. No, they encouraged us to ask the questions, to think right outside of every realm, and they knew that we would choose the right things that made us happy.
Each one of us is now working in our own creative endeavours. My brother is an organic gardener, and builds sustainable housing. My sister is at Art School, creating her life away. And I have done the whole design thing, the painting thing, and music in the past … and I now sit here tapping away on my computer dreaming up new worlds to mentally play in – 90 odd thousand words at a time.
I am one of those people who believe that every human being is born with an artist inside each of us. I think that this is because of the learning and development that our brains undergo as we grow.
I have met some truly incredible people through creativity. Some are from my tertiary education days, and are still in my life now. But even more so, I continue to meet these creative people. Do creative people recognise other creative types and draw them to themselves? I think that they probably do. This simple act of surrounding yourself with like-minded people nurtures your creative soul. I talk to other creative people about things that they are working on, their thoughts and opinions on different things, and just life in general – every single day. No, I am not kidding. This is because I no longer have my parents to help nurture my creativity every day. Now I have people surrounding me that help me with that, on a day to day basis – just as I help them. And the foundations of our friendships – apart from the creativity we share are: encouragement, love, laughter, celebration, and being who we are.
There are those people who profess to not have a creative bone in their body. But if that really is the case, then how do they ever think outside the square, or how do they come up with solution focussed ideas that they supposedly use in their corporate worlds.
Creative people don’t see the world as a black and white object. They see world in swirling shades of grey. They see colour. And they use those variations in their everyday lives to nurture their creativity. They ask the questions like: “Why does it only have to be black and white?” “Why do I have to do it this way?” and finally, they ask the question, “Why not?” (Oooh, I think Edward De Bono would probably be quite proud of me right now!)
This is a really interesting presentation by Sir Ken Robinson. He said something that really rang true in me:
“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we are educated out of it.”
I thought that this message is something that everyone needs to hear – regardless of if they are a creative or not.
