Inspiration

I enjoy hearing random people I speak with that they are not "creative".  I don't believe it but I usually let them finish their explanation.   It is sometimes coupled with praise for my work which makes it more difficult for me to challenge their view of "not being creative" without losing the praise.  I like getting the praise.  As I have written about before, I believe all are creative in one way or another.  People get ideas and then they do something as a result of the idea.

Being creative has two major components, idea and action.  Another ingredient or possibly a catalyst is inspiration.  For me, I experience two types of inspiration, inspriation that leads to ideas and inspiration that leads to taking action. 

When I'm dreaming, walking down the street, on the verge of waking up or falling asleep, meditating, watching tv or reading a magazine, I "receive" images or ideas for art projects (and not art projects).  I describe this as receiving the ideas because the often feel like they come out of no where and are unrelated to what I am thinking or doing at the time.  They feel like a gift.  With the ideas I receive is typically a purse of energy.  It is this energy consider to be inspiration.  It is fuel for the idea.

But after I have the idea, it is not uncommon for it to sit in my head for weeks or sometimes months or years before it comes out in any form (if ever).  An idea is just and idea after all. 

Fortunately, I also experience an inspiration to take action.  This is a little more than feeling motivated to push an idea forward.  When this occurs, I'm excited, energized, motivated, encouraged to bring my idea into reality.  This is a need or desire to take action and the action feels good, physically and emotionally.  As long as I can focus on the inspiration, I am able to ride the wave and continue to take action.  But, on occassion, I get distracted, the flow it broken and the momentum seems to slip away.  I can get the inspiration back with concentrated effort.  Distractions however will come back to haunt me.

I've learned that the inspiration that leads to ideas and the inspiration that leads to action don't necessarily come at the same time or are even on similar schedules.  Fortunately, with patience and perservernce, both will return and the combination of the two allow me to be creative.