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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Passionate Creativity

PASSION - a fervent or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything; experience of strong love or sexual desire. [Passion Week starts here. Click for this week's Bliss Initiatives.]




Creativity and passion really do play very well together. When my creativity is at its best my passion is also surging. They seem to feed ravenously on each other with out depleting anything. In fact it is quite the opposite. The more passionate I am about something the more likely I am to be creative too. It is as if the fervent desire allows my brain to think in different, more creative, directions.  When I am passionate I am down right unstoppable.

Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted... unbidden... it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us... passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we'd know some kind of peace... but we would be hollow... Empty rooms shuttered and dank.
Without passion we'd be truly dead.
-- Joss Whedon

I have really big news on the creativity front... I got past the chapter on creating a ritual in "The Creativity Book" by Eric Maisel! Thankfully he wasn't asking for a lifetime commitment to a meditative practice. It was only a three day request. I've done a 10 day meditation retreat so lets get serious, 5 minutes for three days really shouldn't have been that hard! Basically the ritual was designed to get the PASSION for my creative endeavor going. When I started out I really thought that my creative endeavor had something to do with my blog. On the plane heading out to New York for Chrismas I was gifted with Jessie taking a nap and I got to watch a whole movie. It was Julie and Julia so I got quite wrapped up in the "blogger makes good" part of the story and spent a good part of the flight imagining what it would be like if MY blog, this blog, developed such a following.

I've also been following Gretchen Rubin's wonderful blog The Happiness Project and she now has a best selling book by the same name so you can see how the idea is very seductive to me. Actually I don't think I'm giving up on the idea of blog fame at all (dream big right?!) but what surprised me while doing the ritual reccommended by Eric Maisel is that the blog turned out NOT to be the idea that is calling to me. The really big news is that I have decided to write a book. Not news, to some old friends who have seen me poke the idea from time to time but what makes it news is the fact that I am telling you here in my public blog forum.

As I told you when I started my Everyday Bliss project, I have discovered that telling people publically what I am up to keeps me accountable. I have been very reliable, much more reliable then I have really known myself to be, with this project. When I am not on vacation I write 6-7 times each week and before this I have rarely followed through on a project.  I found a blog post, over at All Write with Coffee that was entitled "Write that book. You've got 365 days." where Ann Elle Altman wrote that to reach a 90,000 word book, it would only take about 250 words per day to get there. Given that I have been writing about 500 for each of my blog entries, looking at it this way makes it look quite doable! I'll keep you posted about how I am doing and when the mood strikes I may even share some of what I write.

So there you have it. You never quite know what will surface when you add passion to creativity. Take a couple days and ruminate on what you have always wanted to create. Your passion may surprise you!

Next post: Passionate Creatives and other passionate visionaries.

My 13 bliss virtues: joy, order, creativity, passion, whimsy, serenity, inquiry, community, romance, gratitude, moxie, humility, surprise


1 comment:

  1. YAY for you! I am so proud of you. Friday is no problem since I am FREE! I will bring Maisel book and we can commiserate or collaborate, depending.

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Ben Franklin's 13 Virtues

  • 1. TEMPERANCE - Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
  • 2. SILENCE - Speak not what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
  • 3. ORDER - Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
  • 4. RESOLUTION - Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
  • 5. FRUGALITY - Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. waste nothing.
  • 6. INDUSTRY - Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
  • 7. SINCERITY - Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and if you speak, speak accordingly.
  • 8. JUSTICE - Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
  • 9. MODERATION - Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
  • 10. CLEANLINESS - Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths or habitation.
  • 11. TRANQUILITY - Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
  • 12. CHASTITY - Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or to the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
  • 13. HUMILITY - Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

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