"THE VITALITY OF LIFE IS IN STAYING A VERB"

Hi Everyone! Here goes blog #4. I am loving counting these blogs. Especially, as until now I have never blogged anything in my life! So with every blog I get out, it’s a “Yay! I made it through another one!” This feeling of counting and making it through another piece of work has carried over in a project I have been working on for the last 80 days! The 100 days project. It’s a project where you consistently participate in and document a creative activity for 100 days. Its open to anyone for all kinds of projects! And I have made it to day 80 now!! Woop Woop!!

It is something I have wanted to do for many years but lets face it, the idea of creating something everyday for 100 days is pretty frikin daunting. I think this time it actually manifested because the idea was simple and easily manageable. So what was the idea? If you have been following my blog posts so far, you might be aware that I am an Elizabeth Gilbert fan girl! She does these amazing podcast series called magic lessons. These are the bomb! I highly recommend them for everybody! In one of the episodes she features an incredibly eloquent poet Mark Nepo. Something he says in this episode just blew my mind and stuck to me like sweet sugary goodness! He said:

“ We often get told be a noun, but the vitality of life is in staying a verb”

MMMMMHHHMMMM. PREACH! We are so conditioned to identify our self in labels, when really, life is about staying in action. I wonder what our thoughts, actions, conversations with ourselves and others would look like if instead of aspiring to become for eg. a designer. We aspired to express, to create, to heal, to inspire. The possibilities from this would be so much more exciting! So I started asking different people this question. “If you aspired to be a verb, what verb would that be?” Then I would document and present those verbs as beautifully as possible everyday for 100 days. You can check them out at www.100daysproject.co.nz/projects/100-days-2016/curiously-creative-953

Now I must admit this still wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be initially. Collecting 100 verbs from 100 actual people is a mission in itself. We are so not used to thinking of ourselves in verbs that it took most of us aaages to think of one or two or 3. So while 80% of the verbs so far are based on real people answers, some are just randomly picked verbs that I liked. Oh well, whatever! They are still verbs right!? If I treated it like an exact science I wouldn’t have made it to day 80. This is where having to just get on with whatever I had and not being a perfectionist about it was the biggest creative lesson for me. Like our girl Elizabeth Gilbert puts it “Done is better then good”

If you don’t think you will get the chance to listen to the magic lesson episode with Elizabeth gilbert and Mark Nepo. I will leave you with these beautiful words of his.

“Keep doing what brings you alive. The best we can do is cast seeds. You wont know which ones are going to sprout, which ones will have rain come on them, sun come on them, but just to get back to work. The work is staying in conversation with the sanctity of life. Immerse yourself wholeheartedly. Not from a space from doing excellent work. Be devoted to keep growing. It hears not to be heard and not to be seen and more deadly to not to hear and see."

With Love and a massive splash of joy

Akriti
Your Creative Curiosity Advocate. 

Ps. We do still have 20 days left! So if there are any verbs you would like to see for your own pinboard, that aren’t already up. Just post a comment under the facebook post and I will try my best to include them. Heres is the link for them. www.100daysproject.co.nz/projects/100-days-2016/curiously-creative-953

Pps. Below is that inspiring podcast I mentioned above. 
- Magic Lessons Ep. 204: "Who Gets To Decide Whether You're A Legitimate Artist?" featuring Mark Nepo
www.elizabethgilbert.com/magic-lessons/

 

 

FROM A PLACE OF LOVE

Hi everyone! Welcome to blog#3! Today I share one of my experiences with the ‘P’ word. One of the biggest buzzwords, and also a word of dread. That word. PURPOSE. 

In the midst of figuring out what my thing was, I got invited to a wonderful workshop organised by my lovely friend Keri Clarke and her mentor Peleg Top. As we were wrapping up the session, Peleg asked us this “What question do you have, that if you had the answer to, it would change your life? “ and ofcourse you can guess what I asked! “WHAT IS MY PURPOSE!??” Peleg then asked me what I THOUGHT my purpose was. In that moment of pressure, without even knowing what it meant yet, I blurted out 2 words that came to mind. And that was Joy and Healing.

Peleg’s next response was something so simple, organic and clear in its nature that it shifted everything for us all.

He said “I think we all share a common purpose, but that purpose gets articulated differently from person to person based on each of our talents, gifts and who we are. Our soul. But at the core, we all share a similar purpose, and that in my opinion is to love. My purpose it to love. How I do it, is unique to me based on my experiences. If your purpose is to love and you want to do it through bringing people joy and healing, that is awesome. What does that look like specifically for you? Are you actually practicing that in everything that you do? If that is a purpose you can connect to, what does a purpose of love mean to you and look like for you?

LIGHTBULB!

This gave me immense relief, immediate clarity and reassurance.

Immense relief, because it turned out I already have a purpose. It was simply to love through joy and healing. I did not really need to quantify, explain or write a bio beyond that.

Immediate clarity, because based on how I identified with that purpose, I was able to look at the various things I had going and filter them through what allowed me to experience and share more love, joy and healing. It gave me the courage to let go of things and narrowed down my list very quickly.

Reassurance, that it was okay to change direction and I don’t have to figure out or nail a career to practice that purpose. I could be practicing it in all aspects of my life. In the way I honour and look after myself, figure out what’s important to me, improve my relationships, improve my conversations, interact with strangers. Pretty much how I show up to everything I do. Easier said then done right! ;) Definitely the work of a lifetime!

So really things that I learnt and have to keep reminding myself of every now and again is that:

1. My purpose can be just a word or two or a feeling. Does not have to be a well executed bio.
2. My purpose doesn’t have to be unique to me but is unique to how I practice it
3. There is ultimately only one purpose. To see, and do from a place of love.
4. Overthinking is not my friend!
5. Spontaneous moments of combustion = Clarity!

So what does operating from a place of love look and feel like for you?


With love, light and a massive splash of joy

Akriti
Creative Curiosity Advocate


Ps. You can find out more about the wonderful people I mention in this post and how they are following their creative curiosities below. :)

Peleg Top - www.pelegtop.com
Keri Clarke - www.heroines.co.nz

 

A WONDERFUL CRIME OF PASSIONATE FRUSTRATION

Hi everyone! Here goes blog number 2! It feels surreal that it has been already and also only a month since we sprouted! Today, I talk a bit more about how curiously creative came to be. In particular, how the name came to be. I would love to say it was a sophisticated, magical process with visits from Yoda. Instead it came from a frustrating, shameful, annoying, anger inducing, and flailing process!

I mention in the last blog, (and probably will in every blog here forth) that I am a lover of many things. I am a designer, dancer, teacher and creative thinker for a lot of things. And I LOVE all of them! Trying to choose one thing was like being told you could either be a sister or a friend, mum or a wife, potayto potahto!! A part of me knew that I just needed to follow my curiosity(s) and that would help me. But then the other part wanted to scream, WHICH CURIOSITY DO I FOLLOW FIRST!!??

You can imagine how this demoralizing dilemma would carry forward when being unemployed and looking for work. And as you sometimes feel when looking for work, is that you should go to networking events. I absolutely DREADED going to these and being asked what I did. Uh~ I’m kind of a graphic designer and a vintage jazz dancer and teacher… also an information designer… and no that is not I.T… Moving on… I am also kind of a service designer...  improving services with blah blah blah... Oh I was a university lecturer too. Instead, what I REALLY wanted to say was that I have been doing bird illustrations lately and flippin stoked I just finished a fabulous cat!!!?

Then one day.. I got asked to write my bio! Everything I am in 100 words or less. CRAP! What do I write!!? Unemployed, passionately confused, stoked about cat illustration!? Umm. Yeah. That is not going to cut it.

I remember talking to my husband about my insecurity on how to best describe myself. After what felt like gazillion versions of glorified lies written in different sentence structures, I had a hissy fit! Deleted all my drafts exclaiming, “you know what! I am curiously creative! There!“ Snapped the laptop shut and went to bed angry with myself, and my husband for not telling me who I should be.

To my surprise, the next day, as I calmly voiced it out loud, curiously creative felt right. It felt honest. It felt like me. From there, the bio wrote itself in 5 minutes. The more I used it, the more attached I got to it and the more it felt like my home.

What I got from this experience, was that sometimes allowing yourself to feel everything you feel, the anger, the shame, the frustration, can reveal more clarity and truth then trying to pretend to feel what you think you should be feeling. Secondly, rather then trying to be defined by what you do or did, really thinking about who we are and where we are right now.

In my case, no matter what curiously creative looks like in 1 month, 6months or 10 years, I know I will always be curious and always be creative.

BEHOLD! An ode to Curiously Creative! A wonderful crime of passionate frustration!  
 

With love, light and a massive splash of joy

Akriti
Creative Curiosity Advocate