One of the events is Muse-A-Fair, taking place on December 2-3, 2011 in Kamloops. What is this “Muse-A-Fair” you ask? Here’s the description of it, from Janet Whitehead who is the founding and inspired creator:

There is a community of kindred spirits  in Kamloops…

Each are mortals who have chosen to live their inspired life, to explore their passions and joys, and to honour the creative spirit within.  They met through coursework with ‘Musings and Mud’ and each have evolved into Inspiring Muses …

The Muse A-Fair is a show, sale and play event that will bring inspiration (and amazing gifts!) into your life.  From unique arts and crafts to learning about nature, to community projects  to the written word….. and more.

We are breaking the boundaries of what ‘creativity’ is …
Come see. Come play.

As part of the promotion for this wonderful and inspiring event (now into its second year), I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Janet, our Creativity Coach at Musings and Mud Coaching Studio. The interview is featured today on her blog.  If you don’t know me well, this is your chance for a teeny tiny glimpse into who I am. Enjoy!

Q: Do I have any tips for aspiring writers on starting their blog?

A: Just get started and don’t worry about it being perfect. If a primary concern of yours is that the blog be perfect, and you feel you might mess it up for a while, you will never get it started. I’m assuming here that you already have some sort of message you want to convey, with some vague idea of the types of articles you want to write.

Q: How do you get the blog started?

A: See one of my first posts: On starting a blog. See also, the high-level procedure below.

Q: What platform am I using for my blog?

A: WordPress 3.1 (I started with an earlier version, but just upgraded yesterday).

Q: What theme am I using?

A: Magazine Basic

Procedure (here I am wearing my technical writer hat)

WordPress makes it very easy to set up a blog. Here’s a high-level overview (based on my memory of what happened 14 months ago, and even that is a bit foggy):

1. Create a WordPress account.
2. Choose the hosting location and create the blog.
   If you have your own web site, you can host the blog on your own web server. Or you can host it on the WordPress server.
3. Pick a theme (the “appearance”) for the blog.
   Look for the Appearance box on the left side of your blog control panel, and click Themes. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of themes to choose from with more coming out every day. Installation of the theme is really easy… just click the Install button (or something like that).
4. Enter some configuration settings to customize the look and feel of your blog.
   Such as… adding your own graphic banner, how many columns, what those columns look like, add a custom menu (if you want one). With my theme, configuration pages were provided so I didn’t have to go messing around in the XML code. (Incidentally, I did mess around with the XML code yesterday to delete something, and completely BROKE my blog. I had to re-install the theme, which required reconfiguring my custom settings too. Aargh!)
5. Add widgets to your blog page.
   Widgets are those little boxes that provide user functionality on your blog. My widgets are Search, Subscribe, Links, Recent Posts, Older Posts, Categories, and Featured Image. There are hundreds of widgets available to choose from, and you find them by searching for plug-ins.
6. Install a backup plug-in and define the schedule for automatic backups.
   You never know when your blog will get broken and you need to restore it. I configured mine to be backed up weekly. You can also initiate a backup on demand.
   NOTE: The backup plug-in backs up your blog content – your posts, galleries, comments etc. But I don’t know if it backs up your theme and customization too.
7. Install a spam filter plug-in (Akismet).
   The spam filter catches what it thinks is spam and puts it somewhere in your control panel for you to look at and manually approve or delete. It’s great to get lots of comments on your blog posts, but only if those comments are relevant to the posts themselves. (Unless… you really do want comments about penis enlargement on your blog posts…. hmmmm?)

That’s basically it! Hope this helps all you aspiring writers …

Subscribing should be easy – there’s a SUBSCRIBE link in the top navigation menu. But maybe some do not know how to subscribe to RSS feeds, and that’s the only option provided. But I do know that subscribing to an RSS feed is only good as your willingness to manually check your feeds, when you have the time. And who has the time anymore? I certainly don’t. I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds, but never remember to go read them.

So tonight, after (oh my god!) three hours of searching for “just the right” WordPress plugin, installing them, testing them, deleting them when I didn’t like how they appeared on my blog, I finally found one. It’s called Subscribe Widget (in case you’re interested), and it allows you to add and configure icons that link to RSS feed, Comments feed, Twitter, Email Subscription (powered by Feedburner), and Facebook. I put them in in the SUBSCRIBE widget on the left side bar. The Feedburner email subscription required that I create a Feedburner account, configure some options there, and enable email subscription. Enabling email subscription configuration was not intuitive, and I had to go searching for help on how to do that via Google search. After I enabled it, the Email Subscription button reported that the service was not activated, and after some poking here and poking there, I finally determined that I had copied only part of my Feedburner account name into the button configuration.

What a frustrating experience this has all been, but now that it’s done, I am happy and I like how they look.  Please go give the subscription options a try, and send me your feedback by entering a comment below.

Oh – I also added a Featured Image widget to the sidebar on the right. Because one of the spammy comments suggested I needed more photos to spice up the blog a bit. But… I’ll have to upload some more photo galleries for variety. I have only one gallery uploaded, of the photos I took at last year’s Salmon Run (see Salmon Run at Adams River, British Columbia). But, that’s an exercise for another time. I’m hungry and I’m really late for my evening meal.

The SUBSCRIBE link in the top navigation menu will just have to sit there for now. To remove that requires that I dig into and edit my theme XML files. I know nothing about XML, so that exercise will be another several hours. I just don’t have the mental energy to tackle that tonight!

Thanks for visiting and reading, and please do come back!

1. Keep you informed about what I am doing and when.
2. Share my newest and exciting works with you, and finally…. to
3. Share with you, some of the hard-earned experience I acquired since I began selling my photography way back in 2003. 

Did I honor these intentions?

1. Well… sometimes I did. Maybe some of the articles provided clues about what I’ve been doing.
2. No… I don’t think so, but maybe some of the images I posted in the articles provided clues.
3. Well… maybe… but not necessarily  in the way I intended.

Near Valemont, BC, at 5 pm, January 4, 2010.

Truthfully,  it’s not that easy to maintain a blog. First.. you have to come up with something interesting to say. Then… after you think of something interesting to say, you need to sit yourself down, right now, and get it typed out on screen or at least scribble it out on some scratch paper. I honestly cannot remember how many articles I have written in my head. And they were really good. But I maybe didn’t feel like sitting down to type them or even write them out. Maybe I was composing the article while I was driving, and as we all know, typing or writing while driving are not activities sanctioned by the law. So the next day … or sometimes the next week… when I was ready to sit down and type them out, I couldn’t remember a single word. Sigh….!! Intention is there. The ideas are there. The discipline is not. Most often, neither is the time.

I do visit my blog administration panel quite often to monitor the spam comments. In the beginning, I received a comment here, another one there, that were flagged as spam. Then would come 10 or 15 in a day. Then, 25. Last week, 78 over the course of several days. Then yesterday, 442!!  442!! OH! MY! GOD! Where is all this spam coming from? The links provided with the comments show that many of them come from the same web site, but from different users.  Many of the comments are identical word for word. Others are identical in message, but with different wording. Most of them are for particular articles (Earthworms and My Journey to Musedom to name two), indicating to me that those articles have caught someone, or some thing’s attention out there on the web. Really? I hope so! I could mass delete them all, but what if I deleted a comment that is valid? So I’ll review every single one, and take appropriate action. It will take me a while. Like I don’t have enough to do. So…. If a comment you made does not appear on this blog, Sorry! Next time make a comment that includes specific information suggesting that you know me (and how) or from the article so I know it was not generated by some automatic blog comment maker. You might even make it past the spam filter. You know who you are.

I intended this blog to be a primary way to stay in touch with what I’m doing… you might decide it’s better to visit Views by Linda Photography on Facebook.

BC Rain Forest, Hope British Columbia

Have you ever been “over inspired?” I sometimes wonder if I am over-inspired.

The abundance of photography-related inspiration I am subjected to on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis is one of the reasons I have so many photography projects on the go. But all that I am doing now doesn’t even come close to touching all the photography-related things that I want to do before I leave this existence.

Recently, I had the pleasurable experience of attending a photography presentation by Chris Harris, a photographer located near 105 Mile Ranch, British Columbia. His presentation was entitled “Motherstone: British Columbia’s Volcanic Plateau“. Did you know that British Columbia has a volcanic region? I didn’t! And apparently, neither do many other people. But that will change as a result of Chris’s newest book which contains beautiful photographs (with beautiful words by Harold Rhenisch) of the region. Photographs that take my breath away and light the spark within me. The spark that drives me out with my camera to create beautiful images of my own.

So … now I have another item to add to my “inspired to do” list – to explore the central interior of British Columbia, to see with my own eyes (and my camera) this geographical treasure. Let’s see, that’s item number two thousand and twenty five. LOL!!

Learn more about Chris’s book: “Motherstone: British Columbia’s Volcanic Plateau.”

acrylic on 8x10 canvas board; painted using a "stamping" technique

Before I became a Creative Muse, I had no confidence in myself as a Creative Being. I think the biggest reason is that I felt I did not receive recognition or encouragement for anything I attempted to create.

In my child life, I pursued artistic creativity by replicating other people’s drawings. You know – rock music album covers… artist talent tests in the back of magazines. I did okay. But create my own drawings? Uh uh!

In my adult life, I began a career in technical writing, where everything is black and white with no shades of gray. There isn’t much opportunity to be creative in the projects I work on. Except one time, where I was asked to write a procedure on how to cook a hard-boiled egg… for a Martian. That was fun! (It was a skills test for a job interview. I made the hiring short list of candidates for the job, but just before hiring, the company declared bankruptcy!)

My true creative life began when I bought a digital camera for use in my technical writing work. But instead of “working” one afternoon, I took the camera out to the garden to photograph the flowers. I showed those early photos to a trusted friend, who promptly declared that I had a good eye. On that day, my life changed forever. Photography became an all-consuming passion… one that eventually resulted in the tearing up of roots firmly established in Ontario in order to set down new roots here in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Shortly after I began my new life here, friendships connected me with a Creative Muse group. What is that, you say? You can learn more at www.musingsandmud.com, but the quick answer is: The Creative Muse Group is a series of workshops where you get to learn how to be a creative being, and have fun while doing it. During these workshops, I learned how Nine Modern Day Muses can be called upon to break down the barriers to creativity. The fun part in all this was being able to play with clay, paint, paper, colored pencils, and other creative materials.

And you know what I learned about myself?

I AM A CREATIVE BEING! I REALLY AM!

My creativity muscle was weak (in my opinion), but IT’S THERE! I just need to exercise it, and exercise it LOTS!

At the end of the Creative Muse workshops, I was asked to describe myself as a Muse:

I am the Muse of Courage, Determination, and Success.
I am independent and I am not afraid.
I do not lose sight of my goals, and I do not quit until they are achieved.
I will even go beyond what is expected, because “not to” means to stay small, which is never enough.
If I can do it, you can too… if you also have the courage to just try.
I pursue my dreams on winged feet.
My modern day name is Vikky. The Roman equivalent is Victoria and in Greek, it is Nike.

(In Greek mythology, Nike was a goddess who personified strength, speed, and victory. She is known as the Winged Goddess of Victory. According to classical myth, Nike’s father Styx brought her and her siblings to Zeus when he was assembling allies for the Titan War. In this war, Nike assumed the role of the divine charioteer, flying around battlefields and rewarding the victors with glory and fame. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike (mythology)

After note: Since the writing of this article, Linda is exploring other creative mediums such as painting and Zen doodling. The painting you see above is one of her first creations.

Sockeye Salmon at Adams River, British Columbia

The sockeye salmon are migrating back to the waters to spawn where they were born 4 years ago. Legend has it that First Nations people used to be able to cross the river on the backs of spawning salmon, because there were so many. This year is estimated to be the biggest migration back to the Shuswap waters and Adams River (75 kms east of Kamloops, British Columbia) in recorded history. As reported in the Kamloops Daily News, on August 25, 2010:

“…. More than 25 million fish are on the move into the river, headed for spawning grounds throughout the Interior. More than 16 million of the Fraser River fish are bound for runs in the Shuswap, including the Adams River. … native and sport anglers will likely harvest 40 per cent or so of those fish. The rest, however, are expected to arrive on the spawning grounds, meaning more than eight million fish could be in the Adams River this October. This is the largest return in the sockeye’s four-year spawning cycle, but this year’s estimates are much larger than past peaks. In 2006, 2.5 million fish returned. In 2002, 5.5 million came back. … Hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to head for the park to take in the natural spectacle, billed as the largest run of spawning fish in the world.“

Wow. And I live so close! And I’m a digital photographer! When I heard this news, I promised myself that I would go view this event for myself. After all, I may never have a chance to see such a sight again. So, on Thanksgiving Day, I went. I forced myself out of bed when it was still dark outside. And I was on the road for the one hour drive when it was still dark. I wanted to be there early, because I’d heard that many tourists were coming to Roderick Haig Brown Provincial Park, from as far as Japan, England, and other countries too. Parking would not be allowed on the road leading into the park. The parking lots would probably be full, in spite of the fee being charged. I wanted to be there early – before the crowds, to make sure I would get good parking. I planned to be there the full day, so I could hike the trails in search of the best photography spots.

I arrived shortly after 7 am, just as the sun was rising over the mountains and the mist was slowly evaporating off Shuswap Lake. A bright sunny day – a real treat after the days of rain we’d had before. But a bright sunny day is not necessarily the best condition in which to photograph fish under water, even shallow water. Light reflection on the water surface obscures the scene below. A circular polarizing filter is required on the lens to cut through the glare. Bright sun in front of you blinds you, making it difficult to see through the viewfinder, and fools the digital sensor into bad exposure.  So…  get the sun behind you. But not easy, as it requires crossing the water, not desirable when you’re not wearing tall waterproof boots. Yeah – so I got my feet wet a couple of times.

What an amazing experience. The sound of rushing water, and the slap slap of salmon tails as they struggled their way upstream, to get to their destination, who knows where. I stood and watched these amazing fish… as they made a “run for it” over boulders and the bodies of other dead fish in shallow water, as they struggled against the current. Many succeeded. And I watched as a few failed to get past the boulders, as they flopped over on their sides, gasping, as they drifted backstream with the current, too weak to resist. And I watched with surprise, as a few seemed to have no trouble getting over and past the boulders but promptly let the current carry them back to where they came from, as if they thought “that was fun… AGAIN!” And I watched as more than one salmon floated on its side for long periods of time, almost motionless, in water so shallow, and so still I thought it would die right in front of me. I felt tears rise, and I resisted the strong urge to gently nudge the fish back into deeper water. This is what is supposed to happen. Don’t interfere. But no, it was not time yet. A few minutes later, the salmon would give a big flop, and swim back downstream in order to make “another run for it”.

I spent 7 hours there. I had planned on hiking the trails, but found that there was plenty for me to see in less than a 5 minute walk. When I arrived, it was quite peaceful and quiet. When I left at 2 in the afternoon, I had to fight for space on the trail back to my vehicle. And negotiate my way past the cop directing traffic in and out of the busy parking lot. It was a day well spent. As I view the photos I captured that day, I still feel the emotion I experienced. I may go back …

Learn more about the salmon run from the Adams River Salmon Society. 
Note: This web site was not available when I acquired the link for this article. When I visited the site 1.5 weeks ago, the photo galleries were disabled due to heavy traffic on the site.

View my salmon run photos (in slide show mode, click to advance, or just sit back and watch):

[Show as slideshow]

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Adam: organic (not synthetic) oil slick on sand. This image is one of a series of 3 images portraying facial profiles in nature.

Updated November 3, 2010 with a link to “The Story of Stuff” – an eye-opening video about the cycle of consumerism and how it affects the entire planet.

I recently bought myself a house and moved into it 2 weeks ago. The lawn needs cutting and I don’t have a lawn mower (… yet). So I’ve been considering calling someone in to cut it for me, but first…  I need to do something. The grass is long. It hasn’t been cut in at least a month, and we’ve had lots of rain. Neighbors have cut their own lawns twice since I moved in. Unfortunately, the weeds that are intruding are also long. I figured it’s easier to dig out weeds in grass when you can see them. So this morning, I got on my hands and knees to dig them out. My plan was to get the weeds out, put some new grass seed in, and next Spring, I should have the perfect looking lush green lawn that we all strive for in the city.

Now… as a new home-owner, I don’t yet have any gardening tools. My digging tool is a long flat-head screwdriver, my gardening gloves are yellow (P)latex, and my weed pail is the one in which I buy my kitty litter for my cat. So, I’m on my hands and knees, digging away and filling my pail, when I began to notice something unusual. A few inches away from where I punched my digging tool into the sod, earthworms were reaching their heads high into the air and literally lunging out of the earth. And scooting themselves across the top of the grass onto my pavement driveway only inches away. What’s going on here? I’ve never seen earthworms move so fast, and there are so many of them. I could open a fishing bait shop, there’s so many.

As I thought more about this unusual sight, I began to put myself into the earthworms shoes (so to speak), and I began to imagine what I was doing must be like for them. Down punches a long metal pole with a sharp edge. Cutting a worm in half here, barely missing another over there. Roots that formed the mazes and labyrinths of their homes being yanked out by  gi-normas hands, tearing their world apart. Light and heat, where there was once only secure cool dark.

“I’m sorry”, I said, as I carefully moved each worm back from the pavement to a patch of bare loose soil, where there was once a weed. Where I placed the worm was never in the same place it originally came from. No big deal… Then it occurred to me. I didn’t just destroy each worm’s home. I also took the worm far away from where it used to live…  away from its family. Can you imagine …. a space of 6 inches to a worm might just be like the distance between Canada and Japan, on a distance relativity scale.

So you ask, what does this experience have to do with the call of nature? Well… as I was on my hands and knees pulling those weeds and displacing those earthworms, I was thinking about how I should really be at my desk, working on the huge backlog of action event photos I’m supposed to post on my web site. And I was also thinking about whether I should go to this “most of the day” workshop I’d been invited to that was about to start 2 blocks away from my house. A symposium workshop hosted by The Pachamama Alliance called: Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream. The purpose of the workshop was to address the questions of “Where on Earth are we going? And what can we do about it?” A workshop to explore how each one of us can “…. bring forth an environmentally, sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on Earth.” I’d been thinking about whether I should attend all week. Finally, about 15 minutes before the workshop started, I decided yes, I “should” go. Work can wait a few hours.

Now get this…. after the workshop, I was able to sit and chat with Marilyn, who had originally invited me. Marilyn told me about her morning, which apparently was quite stressful. Marilyn was running late and was supposed to help Maja, the presenter with room setup for the workshop. Marilyn described how in the half hour before the workshop start time (the same time I was pulling those weeds), she, Maja, and two other attendees joined hands, called in Sacred Space, and asked the Spirits to help others to find it in their hearts to attend this very important event. Their call worked, because their message was delivered to me. In the behaviour of the earthworms as I destroyed their environment …  in a seemingly small act of pulling weeds. 

The basic message I heard at the symposium: We are in an age of consumption, and all that we consume has an impact somewhere on this earth. The destruction of nature. The displacement of people from their homes because the nature around them was destroyed. The disappearance of trees, pollution of water.  Animals becoming extinct because their habitats can no longer sustain them. Climate change. This message was communicated in a video called The Story of Stuff, a description of the BIGGER picture of how stuff is made, bought, and discarded … and how this all got started, and how we are all encouraged to maintain this cycle. Have you ever heard the terms planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence? Wow!

So… what are we going to do about it? How can we fix this mess we’ve gotten Planet Earth into? Each one of us as a role, and the role each one of us plays can be as small or as large as we want it to be. Even the tiniest act has a ripple effect. What am I going to do about it? I really don’t know, but I’ve taken the first step, by sharing what I learned today with you. Now its your turn. Nature is calling out to you for help. Will you listen, and will you act?

What is “The Pachamama Alliance“?

What is “The Awakening the Dreamer Initiative“? (Changing the Dream of the Modern World)

Note: I had trouble accessing this web site with Internet Explorer (might just be a glitch on my own computer), so I recommend Mozilla Firefox.

Notice Quiet Nature (a blog by Sherry Robinson)

Story of Stuff Project (provides access to many more videos similar to The Story of Stuff video mentioned above)

Dancing in the Light

Today, as I was working at my computer, listening to Leonard Cohen singing his beautiful Hallelujah, I felt compelled to finally figure out what he was singing about. There’s something in my “ear to brain” connection that prevents me from distinguishing most of the words in vocal songs. I think it must have something to do with the level of tones that I can and cannot hear.  Most of the time, my enjoyment of a piece of music is based purely on its melody, the way notes are put together, and if it is a vocal piece, the emotion expressed by the singer. When I read the lyrics for Hallelujah, I was blown away by the imagery they presented to me. Some of the words I connected with, some I did not. It does not matter what Leonard is saying; I simply love the melody and the depth of emotion it conveys.

Earlier today, I had an opportunity to view an art film by a photographer artist Emily Magee of Optick Nerve in Gravenhurst, Ontario. Emily and I are distantly connected from when I lived in Ontario, so when she announced on Facebook yesterday that a film she made was being released, I decided to have a look. It’s black and white. It’s very well put together in that it has a polished feel, and it was evident to me that considerable planning had been put into its content. But …  I didn’t get it. The video is 8.32 minutes long, so when I realized that I wasn’t “getting it” a couple of minutes into it, I just focused my attention on the visuals. I connected with the imagery because it reminded me of where I used to live, and because some of it was quite beautiful. I took a few minutes afterwards to send her my feedback, admitting that I didn’t get it, but that I felt she had done a really good job with putting the film together. Emily replied back that most other viewers felt the same way, but that’s okay because it’s an art film. It’s like a dream you had that doesn’t really make sense. That’s all. And that’s okay with me.

Several years ago, my sister Theresa in Japan told me that she wanted to publish a book of her poetry, and that she wanted my photographs to accompany her poems. I said … okay…. but I was scared to death. What do I know about poetry? Not a damn thing. Most of the time I can’t figure out what the poet is saying. But as we worked through our process of matching my photos to her poems, I learned that my interpretation of what Theresa wrote was always okay, even if it was way off base with her intention. I learned that interpretation of poetry will always be based on personal experience. There is no wrong interpretation. You can preview our finished and published product here: A Symphony of Words and Images: Two Sisters, Worlds Apart, Creative Together.

The same concept applies when viewing someone’s artwork – be it a painting, photograph, or whatever. Each person who looks at a piece of art will be affected differently, and will see something different in it. They may not even understand why they feel a connection with the art piece. Again, it’s all based on personal experiences. You don’t have to understand why a piece affects you, or what the artist is trying to say. Just enjoy it!

What is this all about, you ask, this Creative Muse thing? From Janet’s web site: “The Creative Muse workshop is based on (and includes) Jill Badonsky’s book  “The Nine Modern Day Muses and a Bodyguard.”  

The nine Modern Day Muses are named: Aha-phrodite (the Muse of paying attention and possibilities), Albert (the Muse of imagination and innovation), Bea Silly (the Muse of play, laughter, and dance), Muse Song (the Muse of nurturing encouragement and good company), Spills, The Imp (the Muse of practice, process, and imperfection), Audacity (the Muse of courage and uninhibited uniqueness), Lull (the Muse of pause, diversion, and gratitude), The Shadow Muse (the Muse of gifts of the dark side), and Marge (the Muse of “okay now, lets get started). And the body guard is “Arnold” (as in Arnold Schwarzenager, and I know I didn’t spell his last name right. So what?).

In each session, we learn how we can call on a particular Muse to overcome barriers we are having to being creative.  For example, we learned how Arnold (or a symbol that represents Arnold) can help us fend off creativity blockers. A simple action like brushing something offensive (and imaginary) off your clothing can block the negative effect of an unsolicited negative opinion. Simply saying ”ARNOLD!” can block a looping tape of negative self-talk. (My symbol of Arnold is a loudly proclaimed “DELETE” (as in, Delete on a keyboard). And if saying it once does not work, I keep repeating it until it does work. DELETE DELETE DELETE DELETE DELETE DELETE DELETE!!! I find this very effective to stop negative chatter in my head when it gets out of control.)

Tonight’s Muse was Bea Silly (the muse of play, laughter, and dance). And OH OH OH what fun it was!! We got to play like little kids with chalk, balls, hula hoops, stilts, a big giant willow tree (that bit Wendy), water hose, and a FIRE STICK! That was sooooo cool, and soooo fun, and Byron! You were awesome with the fire stick (you too Janet!)! Lots of laughs! The concept is: if you have a problem (or challenge) that needs an answer and you’re driving yourself nuts about it, or you are feeling overwhelmed with work, step away and do something fun, playful, and silly. It doesn’t matter what you do. Write a silly story. Go out and play hopscotch. Pretend you’re a plane flying through the air. Play princess and dragons with your child/grandchild. Bring out the kid in you that you have forgotten how to be. Let the right brain take control for a while. Not only does it give the left brain a rest (aka – escape), you might even receive the solution you are looking for!

Tonight, I went to the session in a slightly depressed and subdued mood (heavy workload and I didn’t do my reading homework…), and came out feeling energized. At the end of tonight’s session I had a MEGA new idea for a new photography product. It came to me while I was acting like a kid and threw a piece of paper (that I had doodled on during our “What is Creativity” exercise several weeks ago and then folded a certain way) at one of my workshop friends. As I was refolding that piece of paper to put it away, I noticed how I had folded it weeks ago like an envelope, and how pretty it was in all differnt pencil crayon colors, and all of a sudden I had a MEGA “ALBERT” moment. It felt like I had been hit on the forehead, and the vocal sounds that came out of me had everyone coming to my aid, thinking I was having a seizure. I make note cards, and now I’m gonna make envelopes to match them. It’s not an original idea, but one that excites me considerably because now I get to design and make something new. They’re gonna be beautiful!

Three weeks ago, the Muse was Aha-phrodite (the muse of paying attention and possibilities) and we got to do something creative with a light bulb. Last week’s Muse was Albert (the muse of imagination and innovation), and we got to play with clay. Next week, it is Spills, The Imp, and we’ll get to play with paint. I can’t wait.