Musings on Routines and Creativity

This may be the first of several posts on my musings because I have not come to any clear conclusions, yet. But, the gist of it all is how to balance, in my particular life, all of the “must” and “have to” and “need to” with a small amount of “want to.” Already, I’m seeing that writing this out is bringing a little clarity because I felt guilty even typing the phrase “want to.” That’s probably an issue to be explored, eh?

I started thinking about this balancing act as I was reading Sink Reflections. I’ve not yet finished reading it since Amelia borrowed it to try to get her Control Journal going, but I think I’ll probably gain some more insights when I do. In the meantime, I’ve been contemplating the process that Flylady describes in it for doing an emergency house cleaning routine. She has the cleaner work for 45 minutes (if I’m remembering this accurately) and then take a 15-minute “reward” break. Then, the process is repeated. The key point here is the “reward” break to encourage the cleaner to keep on keepin’ on.

So, what does this have to do with creativity or my daily routine? Well, while I do have three periods per day in my routine for Spiritual Renewal (in the morning, I have Bible “meditation” when I copy a psalm from the Bible into a Word document and I type out my response to it verse by verse, then at quiet time, I am continuously completing a systematic study of the Bible, then after supper we read the Bible aloud), I do not have any part of my daily routine that regularly addresses my desire for renewing my spirit through creativity, particularly creativity that involves “crafting.”

Right now, on a daily basis, yes, my blogging meets some of my desire for creativity. Yes, home schooling meets some of my desire for creativity. Yes, music practice meets some of my desire for creativity. (No, cooking does NOT meet some of my desire for creativity.) Yet, I still have a strong desire to craft something.

All last year, my routine involved one block of time per week, usually Sunday afternoon, that I would set aside to craft. During that time I worked on a set of ceramic tiles to hang above our dining room windows. I had great fun designing them and now all that is left to do is paint and fire them. I found myself, however, feeling forced to craft even if I were tired or uninspired just because that was the only time in my routine set aside for crafting and if I didn’t do anything creative during that time, I would lose my opportunity for the week.

And now that our “school year” routine is in full swing, I’m feeling like I’m spending all day every day on “must” and “have to” and “need to” and my spirit is beginning to sag. I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate a little “want to” in the form of crafting into my daily routine. Yet, as I’ve expressed very recently in this blog, I have yet to successfully, consistently fulfill my zone missions on a daily basis (not to mention the de-cluttering thing), so trying to squeeze another thing into my daily routine feels a little challenging, to say the least.

But, hey, I wonder if I “rewarded” myself with some crafting time (even a few minutes) when I completed a zone mission or some de-cluttering, that would work out? I’ll have to muse on that some more. Stay tuned….

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Tags: crafting, creativity, missions, Sink Reflections, spiritual renewal