After being a theater major in college and post grad, I was convinced that if I wasn’t doing theater or something “Artsy” that I wasn’t being creative. Fast forward almost 10 years, I haven’t done one bit of theater since I left grad school, so where does that leave me? Forced to recognize all of the ways that I am being creative while living a “normal” life.

At various times I have been creative in very specific areas of said normal life. For example, one year for Christmas my husband and I wanted to share our yummy recipes with our friends and family and decided to make them spice mixes with recipe cards. This gift idea turned into a 3 year company that we blended, bottled and sold mixed spices at our local farmers markets. The creative parts were fun. For us creativity came while answering all of the questions:

• What kind of bottle should we sell our spices in?
• What really is a Cajun spice?
• How many times are we going to eat read beans and rice to get the flavors right?
• What should our logo be?
• How do you pack the car with all of the things you need to set up a temporary shop?
• How do you sample spices?
• Should we sell online?

And on and on and on. Do all of these sound like questions that any new business owner might ask? I hope so, building a business is creating something that didn’t exist before. Yes there have been and continue to be many spice companies in the world, none were ours. To create something is a process. Kevin Ashton says “Creating is not magic, but work” When we started creating with food and spices we accidentally created a business. This company lasted 3 years before we got bored. Blending, bottling and selling became a simple, yet an uninteresting process. We still love cooking yummy foods and now we have such a better understanding of how to whip a meal together and balance the flavors, the knowledge and experience we learned allows us to create new meals easier.

Not every creative adventure in my “normal” life has turned into a business, many have been fun ways to spend time with friends and family. Notably, we don’t host many parties but we are known for our annual pumpkin carving party. I love this party, not only because I think Halloween is the best holiday of the year, it is the one time a year I challenge all of my friends to create in the form of carving pumpkins with sharp things! Every year someone “forgets to bring a pumpkin”, or says ” I’m not the creative type” and of course this is a challenge to me. I am prepared for these excuses and I always buy a few extra pumpkins, we have amassed a carving knife collection of all shapes and sizes and multiple years in a row I have gone down the halloween aisle at my local store to get the discounted carving kits for next year. So when someone shows up with an excuse, they are quickly met with all of the tools they need to carve a pumpkin. There have been some epic pumpkins, and there have been some that you have to squint and turn you head sideways to figure out what the carver had intended. In all cases we have a fun party where everyone pushed themselves to create something.

My creativity isn’t limited to defined projects. A few months ago I was proud when I identified that my daughter was struggling with our day to day because she doesn’t have all of the details I have in my brain. Several art sessions later we now have a system of creating a weekly calendar where we draw out what is going to happen for the week. She loves this, not only can I tell her what I know we are going to do or who is going to visit, she can help me fill in the activity times by telling me what she wants to do.  In this way we create our week plan together.

I enjoy my creativity most when it starts as an idea, and it takes shape through research, conversations, attempts and fails. Currently, I am mulling over a costume idea for my 2 year old. I haven’t really begun to dig in yet. I have an idea – its an animal. I have done some online research of what it looks like. I have sketched some ideas. I am identifying my constraints. I cannot say if I will go through with this idea yet, at the same time I love having an idea percolate.

Without theater, I no longer have a specific space and time built into what I do everyday, I am still able to use my creativity skills. My creativity permeates various facets of what I do from working to being a mom and spending time with friends and family.  My creativity isn’t something that just happens, I have to try to create something new. So while I agree with Ashton, creativity is work, it is also the way of working that I enjoy most in my “normal” life.