What keeps you from being the lead artist of your life?
One of the most common reasons I have heard Moms give about why they don't pursue creativity is because of a lack of time. I get it, one thousand percent.
On the other hand, I don't get it, one thousand percent.
Moms across the ages have been creative people and artists. We are artists of the home, of the written word, of the paint brush, of the sewing machine and loom.
Today, I want to focus on recognizing what is creative and naming it as such.
We forget sewing our daughter's costume for a school play is art or we forget putting together a casserole with whatever happens to be in the cupboard is an art or even that journaling or letter writing or blogging is an art but I want to remind you that yes, each and all of these is another way you express yourself creatively.
I would venture to say pinterest board organizing is an art.
Writing Top 10 lists for your blog is an art.
Organizing your desk drawers at your day job is an art.
Negotiating with your co-workers is an art.
Asking questions of others in a way that is both strong and gentle is an art. I would extend that to say it is an extraordinary art.
This small park is filled with poetry and vision - fueled by the rhythm of the once active mills that filled the city of Lowell.
One of my favorite women writers of the last century was Lucy Larcom, a writer you probably haven't heard of in the past. She was a worker in the Lowell Mills in Massachusetts, back when young women first entered the workforce in a big way.
She was a child when she started working the loud, heavy machines that wove fabric to make clothes for the masses and in order to keep herself content, she and her sister posted poetry in their work spaces and recited to one another.
From this practice of enjoying and experiencing poetry while working longer and harder days than many of us can imagine, she also learned how to be a writer. Her poetry lasts until today and last April I visited the Lucy Larcom park which runs the width of a city block in Lowell, Massachusetts, including a stretch of green alongside the high school another local attended, the better known in some circles Jack Kerouac.
In those days they didn't even have running water in the boarding house Lucy's Mom managed for a number of other Mill Girls. There wasn't room for complaints about the lack of time to be creative.
She chose to be creative just as you and I may choose to be creative with the snippets of time we have "leftover" and yes, right in the midst of being a Mommy or an Accountant or a Lawyer or a Busdriver or a Dogwalker or a Pastor of the local church, YOU can choose to be creative.
All it takes is a shifting your mind into a place of belief and shifting your perspective into a more intensely creative one.
You are the chief artist of your life. You, your life and your world are worth it.
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at a First Friday soon, when it is warmer than it was in December!, in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
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