Cultivating Your Creativity

It is that time of year again. Time for me to spur my creative impulses on to develop new things to keep myself occupied. I tend to go through periods of time where I have lots of creativity and then I pass through creative deserts. I am currently heading towards desert if I'm not careful.

There are several things happening that are contributing to this dearth of creative responses. First, I am on LOTS of allergy medication as the pollen count here in my state has soared to record levels of whatever it is I am allergic to at the moment. I am spending time sleeping when I would usually spend that time thinking and creating. Second, my computer access at work has been decreased now that my current intern is taking over session leadership and is also taking over session documentation! Hooray!! What a nice situation to occur, but it does have some ramifications for my own process...

So, it is now time to discuss cultivating my creativity. (NOTE: I am not a gardener, so some of my analogies may be incorrect. Everything that I know about gardening, I learned from my Mom.)

Here are some of my tips for cultivating creativity:
  • Do something new everyday. Improvise a song or color a picture. Write a poem or make a gift. Something new needs to happen each and every day
  • Look over past efforts. Looking at the half-finished song that you wrote in 2009 may spark new ideas or may encourage you to finish the first effort.
  • Do not be afraid to fail. No one is perfect and creativity is a practiced skill just like playing a musical instrument. I know that my first efforts at something new will not be great, but it will be a process.
  • Enjoy the process. Have you ever just found yourself enjoying a journey even when you are not looking forward to your destination? The process of creativity is much more important than the product of creativity.
There are many other tips that I could probably think of, but my brain is fried, and it is time to go to work. I am going to make something new today...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sing A Song Sunday - The Time Change Song (Fall)

It's the time of year where most of us here in the states get to fall back one hour. This is a wonderful time as it gives us a chance to get an extra hour of sleep and to reset our internal clocks to be in sync with the earth's rotation a bit more than we are during the summer. I love this time of year and really dread moving to Daylight Savings in the Spring. Today' song is directed towards choir members and can be found here . There is also a spring version, and I'm sure I'll post a link to that one next year when we [shudder] spring forward yet again... Here is a YouTube video of a guy singing the song. I'm so very sorry for the pitch, but at least he's out there trying his best. Yipes. Anyway, the song itself is based on a hymn composed in 1907 by John Hughes. The words are by Dean McIntyre and were written in 1995. I find the song a bit tongue-in-cheek, but they give me a giggle every time I read them, so enjoy!! Sorry for the lack of diagram
Read more

Being An Internship Director: Why I Do Very Little Active Recruitment

Image
I am not someone who participates in every single internship fair or makes ads for my internship program to put on social media. I do not feel an obligation to anyone to fill all of the openings that I have every year. I operate on a "if you build it, they will come" type of viewpoint. I figure that the interns who are meant to be with me will find me. As a result, I do very little active recruitment. I will be part of the AMTAS Virtual Internship Fair this upcoming Sunday. I am not really expecting too many applications coming from this meeting, but I am interested in how it is going to be run. I decided to sign up because I want to see what others are doing and offering out there. So, this Sunday, I will be sitting in front of my computer, listening to what others share about their internships. One of the things that I like about being a National Roster Internship Director is that I have the ability to decide how many interns and when those interns work with me. I occasiona
Read more

Dear AMTA

Dear American Music Therapy Association: I am debating long and hard about remaining in this relationship. I have been in this relationship since college, and this is not a decision that I am taking lightly or without great cost.  I am not happy with what you are bringing to this relationship. Now, I have been a selfish partner over the past several years - mainly because I am not feeling like we share a common mission anymore. It is easy for me to place the blame on you, but I know that this is not all on me. I have tried to be invested in communication and support and understanding, but everyone comes to a time where enough is enough. I am trying very hard to decide if the benefits that you provide to me are worth the feelings that I have about where I think you and I are going. I am not sure that our destination is the same anymore, and this makes me sad. To be completely honest, I am only in this relationship these days for the music therapy interns. I don't think that is a hea
Read more