Scientists have discovered that the left side of our brains control our perceptions of logic and order while the right side controls our creativity.

I have spent pretty much the last sixty five years of my life with the left side of my brain controlling what I do and what I think.  I was an engineer for thirty of those years and that meant I spent hours logically going about analyzing the task at hand and then solving it. The last part of those years were spent writing software applications for other engineers to use.  Yeah, some of that work involved creating thinking but for the most part logic controlled what I did.

I am also a planner at heart. I have records that can tell me what I did almost everyday for the last forty years! That list started out with weekly 3×5 cards and later with computer generated lists. I plan everything including what to do on vacations and what to do every day while not on vacation. It sometimes drives my wife crazy but I am a list maker, that is who I am..

With all this in mind the right side of my brain has been screaming lately! 🙂 It has been telling me that it wants to contribute more to my life experiences. It keeps interrupting my logical thoughts and list making lately. My right brain sees that most of my days are now behind me and I haven’t used much of its capabilities. It is screaming for attention. It wants to control more of my actions. My left brain is a stubborn thing; it doesn’t want to lose control of anything. Control is order and order is what lefty is about.

In order to make the screaming subside some I have decided to let “righty” as I now call him have some days where he is in control. We are never too old to do something different in our lives. So,I am starting to delve into the  artistic side of my nature. The first topic at hand will be an artistic journal. I know the journal part I have been doing most of my life and is a “lefty” thing but making it an artistic endeavor is something very new to me. I have discovered that artistic journaling has many names: artistic journals, decorated journals, art journals, and visual journals but it basically means allowing your creativity to take control of how you see and record things.

But this all come down to making a journal other than simply a written account of things. When I was younger I enjoyed drawing things. I spent hours doing that and I become somewhat adept at it; that is at least for a twelve year old. For some reason I put that aside and never took it up again.  My photography side occasionally let righty be in charge but never to the extent that he wanted. So, here I am ready to give righty a free reign on a portion of my life.  It will be very interesting to see what he comes up with. In the coming weeks I may give you some of the results of this in “artsy” posts. Who knows I might even become good at this but at the very least I want to have a lot of fun doing it.