THE FUN OF CREATING

I want to write about what I have been doing, but if, when I go to a new paragraph, the size changes to very small, as in my previous post, I will have to give up on PNN. I don't have this problem on my other blogs.

Yes, it changed to small, and I changed it back. Grrr!

I changed it again. Well, to continue, I started painting again last August, after a hiatus of many years. First I did a scene of California Poppies near the edge of Laguna Lake here in San Luis Obispo, which I had been wanting to do for a long time. Then I did a painting of Dawn in the Country, which took me a long time, since it presented problems I had forgotten how to solve. I stuck with it, though, and am finally happy with the results. I am about to photograph both pictures, and will post them here, if I can figure out how to do it.

What a pleasure to be painting again! How did I keep from doing it for so long? I am also writing. I do that when I first wake up. Than I eat breakfast, and then I paint. Later in the evening I write again.

People often say to me, "I'd like to paint, but I'm too old." Or they make the same remark about writing, or any other creative thing. Sometimes, instead of being too old, the excuse is that they are too busy. I used to be too busy, too, but I finally realized you can throw your whole life away just "being busy."  What a waste! Especially considering what keeps most of us so busy. That's when I started getting together all the stuff I had written over the years and just put away, and began to work on it.

As for being too old, I was already in my late eighties, but couldn't stand to let that stop me. The thought that I'm not immortal only spurred me on. I had so much fun with the writing, it inspired me to start painting again, and that makes me so happy I want to get on my soap box and tell everybody who is the least bit interested in being creative, to just do it!

It doesn't matter if you're not very good at first--or even if you're absolutely horrible, because why should you be anything else when you start out? Did you learn to walk in one day? But, starting leads you on, and leads you to what you like doing the best, and if you like it, you'll stick with it until you can do it well. The process of creativity is  the most rewarding thing I know of, because there's something about letting yourself to be open to ideas that starts a mysterious thing going. You find yourself doing things you never thought you could do.

That's enough for now. I'd love to have comments from others about how they feel about the subject of creativity. (And yes, I had to put in the font and the font size at the beginning of every paragraph. I can't figure out where to go to get help on PNN, though a kindly reader did tell me what she did to correct this problem, Unfortunately, I couldn't make it work.)