Just thinking about creativity this morning. Over the last few days, with one thing and another, the time I’ve had for DOING things has been limited and so I don’t have much to post on here. However, doing is one thing: THINKING is another.

For me, and I think for many others who explore their creative side, creative thoughts give rise to more creative thoughts and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. In fact, it’s sometimes a relief to get something on a page, or stuck down with glue, or carved or whatever, just because it’s one less thing to clutter up the brain.

For me, yesterday was work-busy and so, in terms of doing, I have little to show. A sketch of a lighthouse copied from something I stored away on Evernote a long time a go. An idea for a small carving. A butterfly cut out from a sheet of paper, just to demonstrate to myself how I can achieve symmetry. (Kid’s stuff: draw half, fold paper, cut out!)

But, in my head, there were macrame wall coverings, a wall of colourful butterflies (both inspired by the wonderful Angel in Escape to the Chateau), several ideas for things I’d like to carve, some airbrush ideas, thoughts about how to finish that jellyfish I started a while ago. And that’s just the arty stuff. I now look at scraps of string or egg boxes or teabags or whatever and I think: what could I do with that? And it doesn’t seem to stop. It’s both exciting and tiring. And distracting which, again, is both a good and a bad thing.

Recently, I was part of a group that was discussing British politics. I actually found that I had nothing to contribute. Why? Because I really don’t listen to the news much any more. Two years ago, I would have considered myself a news junky. Now, resulting from a combination of my own focus on art, a sense that news itself is repetitive and unreliable, distaste at the polarisation of views, absence of reason in public debate, and the increasing globalisation of political movements, I make do with a scan of online news sources about once a day just so that I’m not completely in the dark. I did a bit of research before I voted yesterday in the local and European Parliament elections. But beyond that, it’s not that I’m not interested. It’s more that, for me, now, there are more important things to think about: things that matter to me.

As for inspiration: that’s another story altogether.