Taking a Leap

How many of you think youre not creative?

How many of you, having realized that you are out of creamer have used ice cream in your coffee?

That’s creative.

How many of you came to this meeting NOT wearing clashing stripes and prints? You were creative enough to color coordinate.

That’s creative.

How many of you have used your kid’s crayon because you couldnt find a pencil to take down an important phone number?

That’s creative. And colorful too. Maybe we should have a Crayon Day where all the memos are written in Crayola.

Creativity is a simple formula. It’s a mixture of observation and fearlessness.  A friend of mine hates to shop with me because I look at and touch everything. It’s a sensory carnival for me that sometimes is a bit much. Everything is distracting to me. It’s the shape of that cloud or the print on someone’s dress or the color of that car. Observation gives me information I might use at another time when I need it.

 

I was trained to be observant. My folks placed me in art lessons at the age of 8. But you can learn it. Drawing makes me more observant. When I draw, I see connections and relationships that I might have missed looking at it as a whole object. Next time youre driving, waiting in line or at the doctor’s office, really LOOK at your surroundings. You’ll be amazed at you’ve missed.  (And I don’t know what it is about driving but I get my best ideas behind the wheel.) 

 

 

I had parents who weren’t afraid to take a leap and be creative. My mother is creative. She’s an accomplished quilter. One day when we were young, she decided she was gonna paint the refrigerator. Black. However it went bad when she wanted it to dry faster so she put a fan on it and inadvertently ‘faux finished” the entire kitchen with little black dots.

My dad took a risk and taught me fearlessness by marching us into the ocean and teaching us how to go underwater and hold our breath by telling us to go and get a rock and bring it up. My mom would be on the shore in her straw hat and muumuu sitting in a lawn chair screaming to my father,”Bob! Bobobobob, she’s not coming up!” We would just laugh and point at her.

We just lost my sweet funny supportive and loving dad to pancreatic cancer in Sept and we’re still in the early stages of recovery. My folks were married for 60 years and not a day goes by where I dont think, thanks Dad. Thanks for this gift you gave me of not being afraid to try something new…and more importantly, to serve as an example of fearlessness and creativity.

 

 

When I was young, my folks let me paint murals everywhere. I painted a giant red rose on my bedroom wall which my mother wallpapered around in a matching print. A huge banana appeared on the garage door one day. It wasn’t great but I had a ball. I try stuff. I try again.

 

I paint with celery, with glue, with dishsoap.

 

Im going to publish a book this year on how to recycle high heels.

 

I medium-hop going from watercolor to acrylic to murals to writing to photography to fabric.

 

The Arts Center of the Capital District wants me to teach a watercolor class in the spring.

 

I started a business bringing art classes to nursing centers because there’s so much untapped creativity with the senior set and nothing but time to explore.

 

I quit a good but boring job last May and hopped a plane to Calif for 3 months on an all expenses paid work assignment. Free house, car, the works. I took my son who’s 33 and we had a ball driving up and down the Calif coast and Vegas and exploring. Calif is the standard for creativity. Everywhere I went, there was something incredible to see. I must have taken 1000 photos. And, you don’t know fearlessness until youve driven a highway in Los Angeles. it’s brutal. You just have to get out there and MOVE. But I drive faster here now too. My son was scared of going so he decided to get stinkin drunk the night before we were to leave. I had to pour him on the plane. Imagine being drunk AND jetlagged?

 

I recently sent out a request to 10 people on LinkedIn for recommendations. I got 10 back. I’m sending each one of them a small painting as a thank you. 

 

Creativity takes other forms too. It’s not just reserved for artists. In business, how many of you have had to deal with a difficult person? You will run across them as colleagues, employers or employees. There are all KINDS of people out there just waitng to ruin your day.

But not if you can be creative about it.

One way is to change the way YOU think about them. And I know this isnt anything new, just a reminder, really. Invite that one person in the office or in your industry that everyone loves to hate to lunch. You never know what you might find out. They might be your next customer or project-mate.

 

Creativity is also about how we talk to people. There’s even a name for it: affect matching. We learn to match the way we talk to the way to the way others talk. Some people don’t respond to sarcasm, some love it. You can’t go into a corporate meeting and say, “Yo dudes, whats up?” You might have to use a different tone of voice, a louder tone or just speak with different words. I work in nursing centers as an occupational therapist so alot of my clients are over 90. Sometimes I talk way louder than is comfortable for them because most of them cant hear. Some of them say, “Dear Im right here. I can hear you.”

 

 

I use this technique in my painting classes. My students are all from different backgrounds and walks of life. I have to find out where their comfort level is. Some of them take a leap and jump right in, paintbrushes flying. Others need to be coaxed to leap, even to put the brush to paper. I taught my sister how to paint by dragging out a paintbox she had cleverly hidden under her bed and sitting her down and saying “Just put paint on paper. I dont want to see masterpieces. I want you to just feel what its like to smoosh paint around. And now 5 years later, she is an accomplished artist and sells like crazy. Of course, she got the fearless gene too.

 

Another way we incorporate creativity is to adjust schedules. Who said you have to work 9-5? Maybe someone wants to work 7-3 to be home for their kids? Of course the ultimate in creativity is to work from home online. I couldnt do it. My boss would wanna skype me from the west coast and there I’d be covered in paint. Heyyyy youre not WORKING.

 

My good friend Merci Miglino is the queen of that particular mixture of creativity and fearlesness. She has a blog for the times union and said, paraphrased,  ”Sometimes Im in such a rush, I mascara my roots, febreze my crotch and Im out the door.”

 

I want you to take a minute and think. How have you taken a leap? How have you taken a risk? How can you be creative in YOUR future?

　

　

　

Multitask No More

I’m done with multitasking. I only wanna do one thing.

I’m aware I’m still grieving after my dad’s passing 2 months ago. Maybe even a little weather-weary living in this crazy rain/snow-torn area I live in. Maybe I’m older, wiser, slower or lazier.  But I’m through racing around, rushing from project to project, interaction to experience, breakfast to meeting to errand to lunch to work to picking up dinner (notice I didn’t say COOKING dinner?).

I have a demanding job, physically and mentally. I walk all day. I coerce, plead, schmooze and try to diplomatically eject seniors out of their wheelchairs into life again. It’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it.

I’m tired. I want to go to bed at 8. Technology has made it easy to tape (is that a dated word?)  programs so I can watch them at my leisure. So I don’t have to stay up to watch the new Fall season. I LOVE that. I want to shut the damn phone off, grab O mag,  drink a cup of tea and drift happily off to la la land by 9.

Maybe it’s getting older. 55 is fast approaching. Things look different to me than they did even a year ago. I care less about what people think or how much I get done. Even stuff in my house is not as dear as it once was. Might be it’s nature’s way of easing us into our golden years.  I wake up with more aches and pains that I used to just blow through to accomplish all I needed to do. Now I’m grateful I can use them as an excuse to get out of doing something.

 Instead of thinking about everything at once, like the zillion ideas in my head that would make me a million dollars…or the ways to lose these pesky 20 pounds if I just had the energy to put them into practice… or the time to do all the projects that I think need doing… I’m thinking about doing Just One Thing At A Time.

 I’m going to just sit and listen. Signs really do appear if you’re quiet enough to experience them. They won’t come if you’re multi-tasking talking on the phone, bagging up the trash and feeding a kid at the same time. Put the phone and the trash down. Sit with the kid and enjoy the way they make a castle and a moat out of mashed potatoes and gravy.

I think I had a sign the day my dad passed. A week before, the northeast experienced one of the most horrific displays of cranky weather even known. We had a tornado touch down and devastate many towns. Violent rain ensued and power went out. A chipmunk had curled itself into a little wet ball on my parent’s lawn. Thinking it was dead, nobody wanted to touch it.  The day after my dad passed, it was finally sunny. The chipmunk had somehow made his way to a spot of dry sunshine on my parent’s front steps. I picked him up and took him to a patch of dry grass and went back inside to get a pretzel for him. He devoured it. I left him to his meal and went back to get a shoebox with a towel in it so he would’nt get stepped on in his weak condition.

I went back 15 min later to check on him and he was gone. A good sign. If he was good enough to jump out of that box, he was good enough.  a few hours later, we spotted him running up and down the screen on my parent’s patio. How did I know it was him? How many chipmunks run up and down a screen? You barely see the white spot on their tail as they scurry away when they hear a person approach. I like to think it was my dad’s way of saying he was ok. It made me feel better knowing I took the time. To stop.

The Test

We went away to our favorite town, Northampton, Mass for a weekend. Its the kind of town that there’s always something to do…art, music, shopping, eating, walking, etc.  It was voted the number one art town in the US at one time but Im not sure  if the record still stands. There’s more art galleries and quirky little shops than anywhere else. It’s like  Greenwich Village or SoHo but closer.

It’s inspirational, colorful, fun, silly, serious and sophisticated all at the same time. Having said that, we did not have our usual experience but it was still fun.

An early snowstorm was expected but being hardy Yankees, we went anyway. How bad could a snowstorm be in October?

We usually check in to the Hotel Northampton, our twice a year splurge. But we’re regulars so we got a deal.  Having dropped stuff off in one of their luxurious rooms (blatant promo #1) and iced our wine and liquor, we took off for shopping and browsing. We beelined it to Acme Surplus to  load up on bargains. It was starting to snow. Big sloppy wet flakes that you could almost see the patterns in. No problem, it’ll stop soon,we thought.

Then it’s on to Faces for a couple of laughs and gift shopping. Faces is an extremely unusual store that defies definition. It must be fun to work there. I bought a candle/holder fora Christmas gift.  John bought a flashlight for his car. We came out of there  and it was snowing heavier now. It was sticking and piling up. But people were still out and about, shopping and walking around. We walked to Sams for pizza and tea and watched the snow, starting to feel a little uneasy about the amount of snow that was falling. 

Then we thought we’d better head to the hotel before it got bad. We walked over to the Chocolate Emporium for a chocolate fudge fix (best anywhere). The lights were flickering in the shop as we talked to the staff about the storm. When we walked out, we noticed the right side of the street was dark. As in No Power Dark.  We looked back and one by one the shops went dark on the left side. We took off for the hotel and as we approached it, we noticed it was dark. Which is weird, since big hotels usually have back up generators. We walked into the lobby and it was packed with about 100 people milling around eating hors d’oeurves and drinking. We thought we had walked into a cool hotel party.  It turned out to be a wedding of 160 people! All in their chic sparkly finery, up from the city. I can’t imagine a hotel in the Northeast booking weddings without the insurance of a  back up generator! I don’t know how they fed that many people a hot meal without power. We thought about sneaking some canapes but we weren’t dressed in chic sparkly finery.

And the ironic part of this night was that we had just bought a candle and a flashlight which came in reeeeeeeeally handy.  So we walked up a couple of flights and settled into a dark room that only had light from the balcony.

Now if you’ve gotten this far and indulged my story-telling, here’s the test part. Can you survive a night with your significant other without the distraction of the internet/TV and dead cell phones?

We passed with flying colors. We talked, laughed, drank, ate our fudge, fooled around and took showers (we did have hot water) until the lights came on two hours later at 10pm. But we still didnt turn the laptop/TV on charge the cell phones. It was a nice break. We lost the lights again at midnight but by then we were tired so we snuggled into the hotel’s down comforter and pillowtop mattress. (blatant promo #2) 

Maybe there should be  “No Electricity” romance packages at hotels. You get a room but no electricity. So ya gotta make your own fun. wink wink.

 We’ve had our share of arguments and breakup/makeups, but I think it’s admirable that we had such a good time that night.

 

Sometimes You Just Have To Give Up The Dream

Since experiencing the loss of my dad last month and spending time with my mom more, I am clearing out my life. The dream of having time to do things I want to do has left the building.

 I have dropped a couple of people that I will never spend time with (and no its not my current buds, so quit thinkin its you), clothes, jobs, jewelry and generally, stuff.

I am cleaning out and wrapping up. Not to move but to make room for time. My closet is busting with clothes I will never wear because they are too short/too small/ too big/ a eentsy bit too tight or just wrong. Why haven’t I given them up? I keep thinking I’ll lose weight. Now maybe I will, but I’ll just buy ALL NEW CLOTHES! So out they go. 

I will always love my little floral jacket that is so sweet that I could wear to a tea party or a shower.  But its too tight. Secondly, all my friends are over 40 so there are no showers in my circle of friends. Thirdly who the heck has tea parties? Out it goes.

There’s those necklaces that look so pretty on my organizer but I never wear. I think I just like to look at them. But they’re takin up space so…out they goes. And so do all those broken, tarnished, too short, too long or too 70s jewelry items that sit in my jewelry box waiting for the Prince of Broken Stuff to come and rescue them. No dice. Out they go. 

Books I never read, magazines 10 years old that have those cool crafts I want to do (and never will) cookbooks ( I don’t cook), tupperware that have lost their tops, half finished craft projects, planters waiting for flowers that will never appear in them, etc etc. All of em, gone. And nothing is coming in either.

One good thing about working in a nursing home is that I can donate all these treasures to them for bingo prizes. Someone else is enjoying my stuff now. I get a little thrill when I see my necklace or blouse on a sweet little lady but it’s not takin up precious space in MY house.

Let me know if there’s anything I can do

I’d like to retire the phrase, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” I’ve been guilty of it myself and I’d like to be the first to offer replacement phrases and retire it to Word Cemetery where “radical”, “groovy” and “twenty three skidoo” are resting in peace.

Most people have no clue what you can do. When someone is in shock or grief, they’re trying to survive just getting through a day. They don’t have a list for you to pick from. And won’t ask.  They know you’re busy with work, kids, home, events, etc.You have to be pro-active.

Here’s what you can say.

1. What would you rather have, pizza or chinese tonight?

2. What day is good to come over and help you clean the house?

3. What kind of games do you like?

4. What time is better to walk your dog (play with your cat)?

5. When is a good time to pick up Jennifer or Jimmy for a playdate with my kid?

6. Whats your favorite dessert?

7. What’s your favorite movie? (Be prepared to not only bring it but bring popcorn and watch it with them)

8. Are you better in the morning or evening? (Again, be prepared to take two hours out of your day and bring yourself to them.)

9. What do you drink? (This entails either taking them to a bar and paying for a couple drinks or taking a bottle to them and staying for an hour or so.)

The point is, take a minute or an hour and bring flowers, candy, fruit, a dog, a book or a joke. Bring…yourself.

I AM YEARBOOK GREEN

I was browsing in an antique shop the other day and spied a book with a very familiar color. I didn’t even need to see the name. I knew what it was. It’s not even a pretty green…it’s an ugly yellow green, like a polyester dress from the 60s.  But it was as familiar to me as my favorite coffee mug. My high school yearbook circa 1974.

I picked it up and started thumbing through it,  expecting to see it covered in giddy paragraphs telling the owner how much they love them or that they have to swear to visit them in college or signatures and xs and os and puffy hearts with the friend’s name inside them or a pressed rose from a prom.  But it was sadly blank.

It’s an oversize book both in weight and size so it was a tough load to carry around all day but we did. We took it to school, brought it home, squealed over what the latest guy wrote or laughed about a particular teacher’s comment. Mine was dog-eared after a year of all this handling until the next yearbook came out the following year. This one was almost pristine. Obviously someone did not love theirs as much we did and it eventually ended up here, having taken up space in someone’s basement for too long.

I looked me up and companion and I laughed at the clothes, the hair and the silly poses. A strange feeling came over me. Here I was in an antique shop and I was in it. I’m part of the history of this shop, this town, this world. I existed and here’s proof. I lived and shared space here with the depression glass and old postcards.

I’ll probably contribute more in my life worthy of making it into an antique shop.  I like the fact that I’m an artist and my work will always be passed down, or just around.

Carding for Slurpies

My son recently started working in a convenience store after a zillion attempts to find work. He doesn’t want to do it but it’s a job and it’s funny sometimes. I told him, “Your next boss is gonna walk in that door and hire you away from that place. Act like you love your job and speak sweetly to everyone.”

Convenience stores are a microcosm of life. Everybody has to go in one at one time or another. Either you gotta get gas or cigs or chocolate or candy or coffee or condoms. (Hey, did you notice all the good stuff  starts with “c”?)

So he sees everybody. Everybody.  Potheads lookin for munchies, drunks for that last drink before the ditch, cougars, girls and boys getting a pre-club drink so they don’t have to spend so much money at the club, workin guys who spend their money on cigs just to get through another day at the job or end it with a six-pack.

So he decides to have a little fun with one of them.  His sense of humor is lost on me sometimes but this one was actually funny. A girl walks up to the counter with a Slurpie.  He starts to ring her up and as she is paying, he says , “Y’know, just so you are aware, we are going to be carding for Slurpies soon. Turns out there’s too much caffeine and sugar in them and we don’t want to contribute to the obesity problem or sell caffeine to kids.”

Without batting an eyelash, the girl says,” Oh, ok. Thanks.”

His co-worker (who was training him on the cash register) says, “What? When did that come out? How do you know that? I don’t even know that.”

He smiles at her and says, “It was a joke.”

She says,” Wow. You said that with such a straight face I totally believed you.”

He smiled.  Might not be bad working there after all.