on creating

It's a funny thing, creating. It's a funnier thing creating when you have an adorable and very active six- toothed smile wiggling and crawling and climbing around at your feet. Apparently floating that smile above my head while I lay on my studio floor and listening to the giggles pour out does not a work hour make. Weird.

So, lately I have had to grab creating moments as they come. Which, as you probably know, isn't the most productive way to create. I'm more of a put my head down and maybe don't come up for air for twelve hours in a row type of creative gal. So learning to grab these moments has been a journey...one where I mostly feel like that American Express ad that Tina Fey did a few years ago. Anyone remember that one? She was hiding under her desk with papers and kids surrounding and covering her and the look on her face was, as usual, just priceless. Anyway, these moments...sometimes I grab them wildly and with much thrashing of the arms and pulling of the hair, sometimes happily with high fives and many check marks on that to do list, sometimes while bouncing baby girl on my knee or looking up every ten seconds or so to my girl exploring on the floor and saying with a big smile "hi, beautiful", and sometimes, just sometimes, it happens quietly when my creativity seems right and the fire of an idea is sparked. 

But, I guess I've figured out that it doesn't really matter how I do it. It just matters that I do it. It can't look like it used. And I don't really want it to...those were some lonely twelve hour chunks of time I spent there. All head down and grumbling and intense. So whether thrashing about or singing or bouncing or sighing, being creative again makes me feel like me. Like I'm doing one of the things that God put me here to do (because, really, He gives us more than one). And that creating? It just feels so great. I can't wait to show Bear what her mama made while she was learning to walk and explore and clap and wave.

How about you? How and when do you create best? Any pointers for a new mama?

[Wait...seriously...just like that after not blogging in, oh, ten months you're going to start in without even an explanation? Yeah. Yeah I guess I am? Sorry? Hi? Missed you, mean it?]