The 12 Days of Creativity… Day 1

Posted on Dec 14, 2011

I have been remiss. In my last blog, I invited you to commit to something you wanted to realize by the end of 2011. I told you I would provide you a framework within which to achieve that. And then I disappeared.

I have my reasons, of course: five weeks of nonstop travel around the US, 10 days recovering from jetlag and preparing my British family’s first Thanksgiving Dinner weekend, and then another week of travel to France. Now the holidays are upon us.

Christmas is 12 days away; the end of the year just another week more. So, if you’ll allow me to cram my promise from weeks into days, I will give you that framework in the next 12 days… 12 days of Creativity.

My last post described the starting point of the Wheel of Creativity; it is what I call Home – that archetypal experience of the Familiar. The Wheel of Creativity begins to turn in our lives when Home loses its comfort, and we begin to long for something more.

The journey of life – the creative journey – unfolds as we leave the status quo (Home) to follow this longing. The framework I promised is a map of this journey, the Hero’s journey, your journey.

In the creative journey, the first step is knowing that you don’t want to stay where you are. This is what I call Station 1: Hunger. Hunger is a feeling of emptiness and can be verbalized in so many ways:

This isn’t it.
Something’s not right.
This isn’t working.
This is not sustainable.
I don’t feel comfortable with this anymore.
There must be something more.

Hunger is the gradual, intensifying process of coming to know that the status quo – what has always worked – doesn’t work anymore. It occurs in everyday life as much as it does in the painter’s studio. Let me use myself as an example.

For the past three and a half years since we got married, my husband and I have maintained two homes. When he is at sea, I am at home in one place; when he is at home, I leave that place to be in his home with him. As glamorous as our globe-trotting lifestyle might sound, it is neither practical nor sustainable. It is beginning to exhaust us both. We have not yet arrived at our solution, but we are becoming clear that our status quo is no longer working. We need to make a change. We need to create a new way of life. The Wheel of Creativity is turning.

How about you? What area of your life – perhaps comfortable and familiar for years now – is no longer working? If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to choose one thing you’d like to change. Feel your Hunger today. And join me for these next 12 days as I take you around the Wheel of Creativity, for the…