How To Claim Your Creativity

Chickens Roosting on a Tree
Creative Commons License photo credit: upturnedface

“My future starts when I wake up every morning…every day I find something creative to do with my life.” –Unknown

I attribute my endless to the life I led working on the family farm. I was born into it. My sisters and i worked out in the fields in the sun, in the cold, in the rain and in the mist of lightning and thunder. We were always planting, weeding, picking, and playing on my family’s 88-acre produce and trucking farm. There we chased our shadows and basked in nature and all of it’s glory season after season.

The contrast of the glorious colors of the sky, the earth and the fruits and vegeatbales were breathtaking. We did the most difficult jobs in the morning before the sun would get the best of our energy. We often came upon intricate spider webs shining with morning dew.

Tons of strawberries, pickles, melons and green and yellow beans would be picked, packed, and loaded on refrigerated trucks for the following day at the Farmer’s Market. I can still taste the tomatoes we would pick and eat from the vine while we worked. They were red, ripe, sweet and warm from the mid-day sun.

Picking melons was one of my favorite jobs. It wasn’t back breaking. We would crack open watermelons on the ground and eat the heart out with our hands. The juice would drip down our chins and our arms as we devoured the sweet seedless part.

As we worked our way from one field to the next, i couldn’t help but notice that the texture of the brown, sandy high ground compared to the black, mucky low ground was as different as night and day. During the summer, we would catch pollywogs, swim and fish in the pond. All of my senses were heightened by these experiences.

At the farmer’s market, we learned how to display the produce to appeal to the customers. The green and yellow beans would be dumped by the bushels next to the neatly arranged red ripe tomatoes. Next to the red peppers would be the yellow summer squash and zucchini. Contrasting those would be sweet white onions, pickles and the buckets of flowers. The cantaloupe and watermelons would always be side by side with plates of sweet mouth-watering samples.

It was a sensory experience growing up on the farm. The smells, the tastes, the sights and the sounds are embedded in my memory. Often today the explosive squish of a cherry tomatoein my mouth or eating hot buttered corn and acorn squash filled with brown sugar trigger sweet memories of the foods I ate as a child.

My mother lined our pantry with shelves of canned tomatoes, dill pickles, and raspberry, peach and strawberry jams. I go back in time every time I see a flower growing or a bee buzzing. So when someone tells me I have an “eye” for color, I smile and say, “The farm.” In itself it was a living, vibrant palette. Escaping in the vast beauty of our natural workplace was how we survived the endless workdays of summer.

Creativity is innate. Our lives and our experiences are created anew each day with our thoughts, words, and actions. Tomorrow doesn’t have to be the same as yesterday.

Find some small way to be creative today.

Try a new restaurant or at least a new item on the menu.
Ride your bike or walk to work one day a week.
Rearrange the furniture in your home or office.
Wear an unusual color.
Paint your kitchen a bright new color.
Change your perfume or cologne.
Learn something that you know nothing about.
Subscribe to a blog about creativity.
Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Park your car in a different place.
Go to the zoo and focus on the color of the animals.

These small changes will open the way for new creative juices to flow. WE have the opportunity to create happy and fulfilling lives. Begin today to allow your creative juices to color a whole new world!

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • zStephen December 4, 2008, 7:36 am

    Thanks for sharing this, I do work at doing something creative and innovative every day, and have found that it makes the day much more rewarding.

  • Neil December 4, 2008, 8:56 am

    Tess, I enjoy that you always provide a list of sample idea’s related to your posts. In my mind you’re going that one extra step for your readers. I think I’m going to park somewhere different tomorrow!

    Neil’s last blog post..Surviving Black Friday With Your Wallet Intact

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