Too busy for creativity?

"Think for a moment about your creativity quotient. When was the last time you visually, musically, theatrically or literally expressed something from your soul? Where does your dusty needle land on the self-expression compass? With such demanding, hectic, convoluted, harried schedules, is there time left to manifest meaningful connections to ourselves?"

Janna Mock-Lopez, the publisher of Portland Family and Goodness magazines (and a follower of Rough and Rede), raises those and other provocative questions in a piece that appeared today on The Stump, The Oregonian's Opinion blog.

In "Born to create, buried by modern life," Janna describes the tension (or is it futility?) many of us feel, when the instinctive desire to create or express seems squelched by a jumble of demands and obligations involving work, family and the domestic routine. Anyone's who been a parent knows what she's talking about. What makes it worse in getting sucked into technology-driven distractions like Facebook and Twitter.

But, as Janna points out, creativity can show itself in a number of simple ways: "through the joy of mixing spices and herbs in the kitchen while cooking; by placing our hands in a pile of our child's colored clay and sculpting it into something utterly silly like worms and coils" or just singing in the shower.

That's a simple but welcome reminder that we are creative creatures, no matter how our self-expression manifests, and that one of the best things we can do for our children is carve out a little time for ourselves to nurture that part of ourselves.