today {left brain}

{a left brain - right brain exercise yesterday}

For a minute yesterday, while I happily thought I might be famous ;o), I realized something wonderful.  My workspace was all wrong.  All wrong (and furthermore ~ I couldn't deal with it anymore~)

Now I know logically that those two ideas shouldn't be put together, my workspace was perfectly fine on Wednesday (& i am actually not famous), but for what I needed (my brain was craving) was to shake off those daily-files I had been working on, and work on the flip side.  I couldn't think, I couldn't create, I had space closing in on me and I couldn't breathe... 

Oh, what a mess I made.  

{i actually planned the shot so you couldn't see the 15 piles on the floor}

It's not that I had an idea planned out.  I just walked in, knew it was all wrong, and tore the whole thing apart. 

Do you do the same thing?  Please tell me you've done the same thing?

I read a book recently, written by a girl that is more creatively "out there" in everyway than me.  The Creative Entrepreneur, Lisa Sonora Beam. I love her funky style~ her business plans are even wildly written and painted!  It is not a typical book for running a business for sure.  She is a wild thing.  

What I gleaned most from this book, was this great notion of why we need to use that other side of our brains. (I thought I was just born with half a brain and it seemed to work fine?!)  

We can be so absorbed in our creative right-brain-ness (or left-brainy-ness) that we become lopsided?  

{me at the MET, NYC, devouring the right brain food I crave~ colour}

Her lovely description referencing Carl Jung's work, she wrote, "When you strengthen your non-dominant capacities, what you are naturally good at gets stronger...Exercising my non-dominant functions not only helped me to the math - literally - but opened up new worlds of anxiety-free creativity."  She then talks about being invested in a MBA program and how it helped her artistically - new skills and a strengthening of natural creativeness that she already had.  

So when someone like me, or you,  (superlatively right brained) focuses hard on left-brain activities...I am working up a sweat of skills that will make me a better artist overall?  Dang.  So my tearing apart and re-building my studio with greater organization in mind was a good thing...I am building creative muscle!

So to take it further, if you get in a creative rut, a writer's block, a place of  feeling "closed in" ~ it's time to do something completely different:  quantitative, linear, logical functions (oh, that sounds...fun?).

{in all the chaos, Joshe and I built this inspiration heart of color for my uncovered wall - yum.}

((A thank you to  la Alicia for including little Grace on your blog today...so sweet.  You can see Grace here.))

I hope your weekend is filled with all you love and need,

In this messy barnyard of life,

jj