Tag Archives: creativity

the “when nobody’s looking” blah blah

Posted on
17

Remind me who said that. That quote about who you are when nobody’s looking? You know the quote. It’s supposed to help bring clarity to who we really are, right? Like: Your truest self can be shown by what you do when nobody’s looking.

It’s been floating around in my head lately, or at least some butchered version of it. (By the way, butchered is not spelled “butured” like my brain wanted to spell it. Whew. That was a close one.)

(Glad I was looking.)

So, the quote. Yes! It pops in my head randomly. Surprisingly. Like a 5-year-old with a cape–”TADAAAA!!–announcing its arrival. And it wants to see what I’m doing. And so, this mini mental mirror has been following me around lately and tapping me on the shoulder and demanding my gaze–especially when nobody’s looking. (haha Oh, how cute.)  Ok, like when I’m driving home from work and Drew is teaching the last session of his Revelation Class and I know I’ve got the evening to myself and my brain asks me what I’m going to do and I answer with something like “Whatever the heck I wanna do, because nobody’s looking! Woot!”

(See? That’s what happens in my head when nobody’s looking.)

I should probably assure you that I didn’t exactly invite this little caped mirror into my head. I don’t know where it (he) came from. But it’s (he’s) there. And maybe that’s not comforting at all…

Nope, probably not.

Oh well.

The more I’ve looked at myself–really watched myself when nobody’s looking–the more I’ve learned about myself:

  • I really do like a clean house (even though the 4 loads of laundry on my living room floor would currently say otherwise–and no I will not attach a photo to this post to show you how high the pile is).
  • I have a love-hate relationship with my laptop.
  • I can go for hours at a time without uttering a word.
  • I like the quiet more than the noise.
  • And, most importantly, I’ve learned that all I really want to do is create. I spend a lot of time creating stuff that I know no one will see. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing–the “no one will see” part. So. Well. Um. I’m going to work on changing that. No more hiding my creativity. It’s ok to be the Creative Mandy when other people are looking.
  • Right? Oh geeze…

Until then, it’s your turn! Think back on the last time you were doing something “you-ish” when nobody was looking. What’d you do? Wanna share? Oh come on it’ll be fun!

What I really want to talk about is Inspiration…

Posted on
12

1) Things that inspire me: creativity in others, candles (!!), coffee, pre-dawn rituals, time to sit and think, sunlight on skin, quotes that jump off the page and slap me in the soul, honesty, goals.

2) Are you all out of inspiration? I came across an article last week that floored me. It’s a psychological look at inspiration (here, since my little linky button isn’t working right now and I don’t know why and it’s too early in the morning for me to figure it out: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/why_inspiration_matters.html). Ok. Yes. It’s very much worth the clicking and reading. I had to read it three times to grasp what it was saying, but I needed to get it in my brain.

3) The way Ann Voskamp paints a word-picture and turns a sentence leaves me dizzy. In the best way. And I will read certain passages over and over and over again dissecting the way she stitched her words together.

4) What inspires you? How can you add more of those elements to your life?

Leveraging the light

Posted on
6

Ironically, I slept in just a bit this morning. But let it be known that I didn’t sleep nearly as late as I normally do on Mandy Mondays. That, my friends, was a small victory. Yes I had the annoying stream of morning light through the window cheering me on. But I was going to get up anyway. I was, dadgummit.

I had the best of intentions.

I wanted to leverage the extra hour of morning light that I’ve we’ve been given. I wanted to wake up to greet the sun with inspiring words flying out of my fingertips and pounding onto page and key.

I wanted to make something beautiful and poetic and colorful. And I wanted to do all of this before the 8am hour arrived.

I’m not the only one with such aspirations. Go on. Raise your hand if you feel the same way.

So for those of us with hands raised and hearts ready, let’s do this together.

Let’s make a pact right here, before our body-clocks adjust to this new timeness we’re in. Let’s make a pact to go to bed closer to our old body-clocks’ time. And let’s make a pact to wake up closer to our old body-clocks’ waking time. And let’s make a pact to leverage the light and make something beautiful before the day even knows we’re upon it. Let’s claim a corner of a table, a section of a room, a stack of papers, and let’s make that our morning spot where we gather our thoughts and our hearts and let whatever is in us come floating out over the soft steam of the morning’s coffee.

It’s easy. All we have to do is wake up a wee bit earlier.

My first songwriting notebook.

Posted on
9

I found it the other day when shuffling through a box in the garage and it was filled with good words and bad words and good ideas and bad ideas and scrap papers of anything I had near me when the muse struck but I was without this book. I scratched out notes on receipts and stickies and whatever, and then shoved them into this book.

It opened like a time capsule–dusty and delicate. And it felt familiar like the last stretch of dirt road before turning towards the house I grew up in. It felt reflective and nostalgic like watching an old home movie. It felt like me.

And, just like a time capsule, it held messages from long ago. And it told me things about my future that I’d forgotten.  And I’m not sure what I will do with these pages, but I want to do something monumental with them. I want to celebrate what they represent. And treasure it in ways more prominent and honorable than just a dusty box in our first garage.

I want to turn them into the works of art I’d always intended them to be.

Any suggestions for what I can do?