In chaos, all is possible. 
Every incoming idea is welcomed, with no regard for reality. 
Forget time, money or reason; embrace a brimming universe!
Because if you start with rules, your creation will be stillborn.
Philippe Petit in “Creativity: The Perfect Crime”

Along with the learning curve is the inevitable chaos that accompanies it.  It’s just not possible to start something – anything new – without there being a mess.

It’s not just photography or writing.  Over the years of working as an accountant, many of my projects were new from scratch.  There was no prior trail to follow.  I had to come up with a methodology from scratch, tame data, and make it presentable to a vice-president who had limited time and attention to devote to my problem.

The easiest way for me to do this is to just jump in and start.  I can spend time trying to plan it out, design my spreadsheet, and determine if the data available was adequate (and if not, what else could I get).  I’ve found though that pre-planning it didn’t shorten the process – actually, it made it take longer.  By pre-planning too extensively, I got locked into this had to work this way and no other way.  It didn’t give my mind the flexibility to change course and backtrack where needed.

So now, I just jump in.  I assess my data, start the spreadsheet, make changes, get more data if possible, change the spreadsheet again.  I might go back and redefine the parameters of the project because what was requested isn’t going to give the answers needed or the data is not obtainable or something better can / should be done instead.  Sometimes I’ll get halfway through before inspiration strikes and I start all over again with a better idea.

So why should my photography and writing be any different?  I didn’t wait for my blog to be perfect before I started it.  I picked a theme and went with it.  I blogged for several months before I realized I could change the header and put my own picture in it!  But if I’d waited for my blog to look gorgeous before I started blogging, I would have missed six months of getting experience putting together posts and photographs.

My blog today is considerably different as I’ve gained experience and found my voice.  I’ve learned to downsize my pictures, add tags and categories, and create links.  Click here to see one of my first posts – oh look, a baby beagle!   And he’s looking for a treat.  Gosh, what a surprise.  The beagle has since gone on to write some of his own posts, which can be found here.

So a reminder to myself in nurturing my creativity – jump in and try it.  Don’t wait for it to be perfect.  It might not even be right.  But I’ll learn better and faster if I just do it.  If I have to redo it later, that’s how it goes.

To see everything I’m doing with my 31 Days of Nurturing My Creativity, click here.

To see what others are doing with their 31 Days project, click here.

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