3 day weekend - with creativity?
As predicted, I spent my first 3 day weekend in quite some time doing absolutely nothing. But you must remember that this "nothing" includes stripping down the dirty linens of last week, both literally and figuratively, and making the bed for the next week coming up. On Friday, I played housewife with a trip to the store for the things that fall under the "household" category. (That entire category is off budget, by the way. Splurge! Paper products!) On Saturday, exhausted from the shock of being a physical person the previous day, I settled into the bed, read HP5, took a nap, leaned on all the support I could. On Sunday (today), I was a bit more functional. Early on in the morning I decided not to do any work - you know, for my job - and this let me even begin to face the laundry etc and the shopping for actual food. In a brazen act of non-pouting, we began to fix the house. We heroically started with the soap squirter for the kitchen sink. The old one was a little, um, drooly. So what if in doing so, we also broke a pipe thing (now fixed). The other simple project was unscrewing the cleat for the curtains - there were 3 places in the house which had theirs broken off both sides. For years we have had to tie the cord for the roman shade to a chair to keep the shade open, which is just a shame because it is such a simple repair. The problem was the square head screw that fancypants shades used to screw in the cleat. We finally bought the specialty screwdriver to unscrew the dummy cleats. (The person inventing the square-head screwdriver should have an intervention.) After that, the repair blazed along exactly as simply as it would be reasonable to expect. Which never happens. So in total we had 2 repairs, not counting the thing we broke and also fixed which should count for a third. All this during the screeching, the recon trips into the basement for the banished toys, the power struggles, the tryke in the kitchen, the mandatory time outs, and my main plan which was laundry.
This is what I call doing absolutely nothing.
Anyway, I will probably pay for it tomorrow / next week by not getting some work in today, but something interesting happened this weekend beyond the usual. Little glimmers of my old creative self are waking up. Perhaps it's the "vegetables and liquor" diet (which I heartily recommend). Perhaps it's just simply waking up every day no longer wanting to be sleepwalking. The reason I know I am waking up is, the boring parts of my day are becoming sources of energy.
On Saturday I picked up HP5, just because I found it and took pity on it. Us Yanks find the whole boarding school thing so inventive: the houses, the prefects, the points. However, HP’s author got lots for free just being a brit. This is not uncommon, Tolkien had lots of room for invention but also was given many things for free (greek mythology, animal husbandry). This realization got me completely focused on finding the thing that I am getting for free right now that will give context to a work of writing. I have spoken previously about generative ideas. It seems this generative quality is related to the author finding an existing system to weave the story within. My quest now, is for something uniquely Yank of course, likely Tech, and something we all have in common that provides a great backdrop for drama. I will keep looking.
On Sunday (today) I looked at the grocery list and decided "it's a Trader Joe's list" so off I went. Actually, I changed first. This neighborhood is such a hipster hovel AND I always run into someone I know at TJs. Plus, I was wearing my size 1x tracksuit from Target, completely blowing the fetching Bill Murray vibe with a broken zipper, held together by a fake bling safety pin hair clip thing. I am probably the only person who would change out of sweats to go to the grocery store on her day off, but I should have taken a picture of the crowd as proof for you. Swank-y. And foodies, too. I overheard a couple planning a dish in the cheese aisle, the “chef” explaining and proposing the amazing amount of detail, the “non-chef” hesitantly saying "that sounds good!" but really hoping all he would be expected to do was eat it ;) . The store played the usual muzak. Riding home I was blathering to myself as usual in some tuneful way. But then I realized the blather was original. Derivitave, but original. Of course I completely forgot it instantly, but not the feeling like… if my house was quiet when I came home, AND if I had not sold my piano in the dotcom crash, I might have just written a song today. It's been years. That other life is starting to tickle a bit.
So if creativity is your "sweetest fruit" - and it is definitely one of mine - I do not know what to tell you about how to get there. Just look for evidence everywhere you can. And eat your vegetables.