Via Robyn Jay, a wonderful post from Harriet Wakelam on the "dark side" of creativity and how our participation in social networks may help or hinder that process. First, Harriet puts her finger on something I've experienced myself: I have recently been through one of those 'life reinventions'. Unlike the current 'sexy' portrayal of creativity the process was absorbing, consuming and sometimes dark and scary. During the process I switched... Read more →

For the past several months, I've been fortunate enough to be inundated with work. I say fortunate, because as an independent, to have more work than you can handle is a good thing, especially in this economy. Please know that I am not getting ready to complain about the quantity of my work. I am truly grateful for what is coming my way. However, I am thinking about how creativity... Read more →

After my little productivity crisis of the past few months, I've been working on jiggering with my daily routine. I'm especially interested in finding that balance between activities that support the spark of creativity while still making sure that I get things done. In this spirit, I was quite excited to find the Daily Routines blog, which looks at how "writers, artists and other interesting people organize their days." What's... Read more →

I'm currently reading Lewis Hyde's wonderful book, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. In it, he explores the nature of the "gift economy" vs. the market economy and how creative types are caught in between these two fundamentally different ways of operating in the world. One of the issues Hyde discusses is the difference between labor and work. He says: Writing a poem, raising a child,... Read more →

A few years ago, as part of my recovery from depression and divorce, I began to explore my artistic side. As things got better and I became more engulfed in work, my creativity dried up. I miss it because not only was it personally satisfying, art also fed my creativity in other facets of my life. As an antidote to my current dried up state, I'm now working with a... Read more →

I'm a big proponent of setting up your own personal learning projects and have been trying to keep something going for myself all the time. In keeping with this, a few weeks ago I announced my plans to explore how I could use different blog posting formats (list posts, research posts, link posts, etc.) to learn more about the needs and expectations of people who are new to social media.... Read more →

Last week I asked for your help in getting back my creative mojo so that we could share your tips with others who suffer from the same periodic bouts of brain sludge--which is to say, all of us. As usual, you did NOT let me down, providing me with a veritable treasure trove of ideas that have been extremely helpful. I promised I'd share, so here's the Bamboo Project Readers'... Read more →

Here's a question for you. Would anyone in your organization feel like they had the authority to do this? When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I... Read more →

A few days ago I wrote about needing to build our creative skills. I've also been all about the personal learning environments (PLE) lately, although I've tended to focus on the online tools in that process. So this morning I was thinking about the tools I've used to expand my creativity, which I would also consider to be a part of my offline PLE. A couple that have worked well... Read more →