Create: Day 55
March 25, 2011 
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Day 55
Keeping creative dreams alive.
The Painting, 1919, by famed collage artist Kurt Schwitters.
Columnist and book author Martha Beck writes about “vision boards,” what we called creative collages or dream boards on Create: Day 4. She breaks their construction into three useful steps.
1. Please your animal/angel self. She tells you not to intellectualize your search for images, but instead, to use what makes you react–with a double take or a heart thump. In her schema, as well as in mine, the vision board is not literal but metaphorical. Don’t, for instance, glue a Ferrari and a diamond bracelet to your board. That’s not pleasing your animal. That’s propping up your ego.
2. Let go mentally and emotionally. After you make the board, she counsels you to simply forget about it. She says the purpose of the exercise is to
“focus your attention—briefly. After that, the less mental strain you feel, the sooner good things will happen. That initial intense focus helps us create ‘search images,’ and by relaxing, we increase our chances of noticing the things we seek.”
Hmmm. Interesting. I always thought it was a good idea to keep the collage close by. But she may have a good point. Try her method and see.
3. “Be still and still moving” (a quote from T.S. Eliot). Beck notes that your vision board is no substitute for the hard work it takes to make dreams come true.
“This is the zone of reality creation: regularly picturing delights that don’t yet exist, emotionally detaching from them, and jumping into action when it’s time to help the miracles occur.”
Does this inspire you to do another creative collage or to revise the one you’ve got? Go for it.
(And don’t forget to continue tracking time spent on your nonessential activity.)
Create Month 2
What to do so far:
In case you missed a day, the reminders below are clickable.
Don’t put off creativity.
Use your limited experience with unlimited imagination.
Don’t worry about the destination.
If you’re stuck, lower your standards and go on.
Take a creativity vacation.
Value your creative visions.
Moodle every other week.
Fill out Creative Project Completion Plan I.
Fill out Creative Project Completion Plan II.
Fill out Creative Project Completion Plan III.
Track project reality versus guesstimates.
Practice seeing creatively.
Keep a creative project box.
On the Ides, I’d rather be…
Your materials don’t make the masterpiece…you do.
Be creative 7 days a week.
Get happy…and more creative.
Don’t envy fellow creatives.
Protect your creative time and space.
Track nonessential time.
Don’t swallow myths about creativity.
Get happy. Be creative.
Join a creative tribe.
Make another vision board or creative collage.
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