Flabby Creative Muscles?

If you are like me, you have a TV (or several) in your house which means that it's on regularly. I have a few channels I like to watch, Food Network, HGTV, and the Travel Channel. I like these because they inspire me with new wall colors, recipes or places to travel. Do they help my creativity? Yes, only if I actually ACT on the inspiration. Otherwise, I'm wasting my time.

When I was living in Northern California and going to Parsons Junior High, I was passionately in love with Def Leopard and Duran Duran (don't laugh, you were too!) One of my favorite things to do was put one of their cassette tapes into my Sony Walkman and lay on the sofa with their music blaring into my ears. One of the geeky things I'd do is pay attention to one instrument at a time, say the bass guitar. I'd follow the notes of that instrument all the way through the album, imaging the hot bass player plucking away on the strings. (I told you it was geeky).

As I look back on this silliness, I realize it was a practice in using my imagination. So often we are fed images and we rarely have to use our imagination - take movies or TV shows for example. We receive. That's it. There is no real need to use our imagination. And in our over saturated media filled culture these days - it's easy to let our creative muscles get out of shape. Do you have flabby creative muscles? Do they need a little toning up? I know mine do...

So grab a book with an intriguing story or better yet, pull out your favorite album, eight track, cassette, CD, or mp3 of your choice, plug in the ear buds, close your eyes and imagine being at the concert. Come one it's okay to be geeky every once in a while!

What are other ways to flex your creative muscles? For me, it would be to actually create one of the yummy recipes I saw Ina Garten pull together on Barefoot Contessa (she's one of my favorites!) or it's implementing a cool painting technique I saw on HGTV. It's about more than just taking it in, it's letting it out - moving forward with the creative endeavor.

So, what is your current creative endeavor? Do you have a project to work on over the upcoming long holiday weekend? How are you warming up your creative muscles each day so you are fully prepared and ready to rock and roll? It's not too late to firm up those muscles! You will feel much better when you use them regularly...

Grace & peace on the journey ~ deAnn