I consider myself a creative person. I have drawings and paintings and quilts and pottery to prove I am. I’m creative in my work. I stopped short of calling myself a creative bookkeeper, because of the connotations, but I was creative, and still am creative in coming up with business solutions for my clients. All the work I’ve done in the past 6 years has been in looking at business creatively.
Lately, I haven’t been doing any traditional creative work, so I signed up for a class on Creative Live called 28 to make. It’s 28 daily prompts of things to draw or paint. I did well for 3 days, then the prompt was to draw my favourite album art and I stalled. There are many reasons and they aren’t the point here.
This morning I was doing my 31 day Revolution yoga with Adrienne and today’s theme was creativity. It got me thinking about this stalled drawing exercise. The thought that bounced into my head as I pictured my prompted drawing was, “to what end? What would I do with it?”
You and I know it’s not about the artifact, it’s about the process. It’s about exercising our creativity, about bringing it into our lives, about opening our minds to new ways of seeing. So where was this idea that it had to lead to something useful come from?
Creativity for me had become about the outcome – quilts for my Etsy shop, writing for my business, creative thinking for my clients. Not for the sheer fun and value of the process. This realization stopped me. What if this thinking was making it harder for me to bring the creativity I want to bring to my business?
Clearly it isn’t only about being creative in my (and your) business, but about my business supporting me in being a creative person. At least it shouldn’t hamper me from being my most creative self. I’ve been so focused on the work and making useful and valuable products, that I lost the sense of fun and wonder of creativity.
It may sound strange, but I am forcing myself to be creative just for fun. It’s one of those practices that I know I will enjoy and be glad I did it.
How does your business support you in your creativity? Does it get in the way of you playing creatively and having fun? How can you
