Journal

I have had a week off my regular life. It has meant I slowed down a bit. This whole week I read, rested, and it reminded me that it is the space in between where the creativity is allowed to slip in. A lot happens in the making, but a lot also happens while you are just living your life. Time by the fire, cooking, reading, laying still waiting for the light to welcome morning. These are the times when your brain starts firing. I

There were so many good ideas that came to the surface simply because I took the time to rest.

It is like the Leonard Cohen song,  “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.” Often we are so busy filling the cracks, doing the ordinary, pursuing the extraordinary that there is little room in our lives for the light to seep in. It is in our challenges (mine was appendicitis... I am well again) that sometimes we are able to make room for a new kind of beauty. Or at least see the shine on what once seemed dull. 

Repose is one of the main ingredients in the recipe for a creative life. And if you are like me you have to work at it. I am naturally a doer. I believe in productivity. I love the tactile. That is part of the reason I love rug hooking. One loop at a time and you have something real in front of you.  So letting myself rest, not just simmer, but really rest feels plain lazy. Not even decadent, just lazy. 

My work ethic is engrained in me but the last week reminded me of the need to try and overcome some of it. To step back so that your imagination can fire on the cylinders it has not been using. That is a challenge. I think I feel more worried about not taking that challenge than about taking it. I do not want to just fill my time with activity. It seems so senseless. Years ago, my brother in law used to taunt me with a little song. “Deanne, Deanne, don’t do it just because you can.” I can still hear him singing it. 

Every once in a while it comes back to me so clearly what he was saying and this is one of those times. It fits in well with my New Years resolution of savour. Take time to really enjoy small things. Good food, a little wine, people, interesting conversation, cooking, rug hooking, books and watch out during these breaks for the creative revelations that come. 

The answer can be as simple as what colour to choose in your mat or as complicated as how to continue in your creative life. 

The answers are in the in between. 

What I found out during my rest is that I want to write more. I am going to try to do that here on Woolcake. It is a small audience here, and that’s okay. I want to use Woolcake to talk to you about art , creativity and rug hooking the same way I used my blog years ago. I remember when I started my online diary. It was about 2005 before the idea of a blog had ever been thought of. I was writing to maybe 100 people at most but the truth is it was really helpful. It was helpful because some of those 100 were really listening but mostly it was helpful because I was really listening, to myself. I was sorting out ideas and really growing as an artists and a writer. 

I want to savour my writing time because it is time for myself. A time when I get my thoughts and ideas together and meld them into something real. So if you like this kind of writing you will find it here. In the coming months I hope Woolcake will be a kind of creativity journal for me. A little place I can go to think. To ponder. To ramble. 

For It is in the rambling, the resting, and the letting of the field go to seed that it can renew itself. So here we go.