Tag: Creative Things

Creativity is not limited to museums and such.  I found this work of art on the side of a barn in a State park along the Ohio River.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is a very unique and stimulating place. It is made of glass and steel. We found this creation in the lobby the first time we entered. I thought it was meant to be a centerpiece but in reality it is for cleaning the glass windows. This proves that creative art does not have to be only for art’s sake 🙂

Geniuses think productively, not reproductively. When confronted with a problem, they ask themselves how many different ways they can look the problem, how they can rethink it, and how many different ways they can solve it, instead of asking how they have been taught to solve it….

Leonardo da Vinci believed that to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, you began by learning how to restructure it to see it in many different ways. He felt the first way he looked at a problem was too biased toward his usual way of seeing things. He would look at his problem from one perspective and move to another perspective and still another. With each move, his understanding would deepen, and he would begin to understand the essence of the problem. Leonardo called this thinking strategy saper vedere or “knowing how to see.”

Michalko, Michael (2011-04-13). Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius. Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony. Kindle Edition.

I like to think that I am like Leonardo in that I try to look at things from different angles instead of just concentrating on my first thoughts which are often biased in one regard or another. I like to think that, but too often I am just too lazy to do the work required to think beyond my current worldview. I’m afraid my laziness is somewhat typical in that regard. But, at least I try to get out of my box and see things differently on occasion.

Looking at things from different angles is critical in really understanding the world around us. Sometimes we just get too complacent, or maybe too lazy, to keep an open mind on much of how we view life.  We should all get into the practice of saying “what if” more often. We should all realize that maybe we don’t have all the answers and even the answers we think we currently have just may be wrong.

What if…..

Knowing how to see is primary to being insightful and isn’t that something we all strive to be? Let’s purposely chose to look at things from one perspective and then move on to another and still another. I know this would be very foreign to most of us. We, especially in the U.S., seem to lock on to one way of looking at things and them totally disregard the rest. That fact seems totally obvious given our dysfunctional government and by our bipolar society. What if we tried to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes?

Debating teams, which used to be somewhat common in our educational system is great at fostering looking at things from other points of view.  A topic is presented for debate and one team is given the task of argue for the topic and one against it. It forces the team members to look at things from different perspectives. But I suspect the true art of debating is pretty much lost in many generations now.  I know it is gone from our political debates. All they are about now is sticking to your message no matter what the topic is. They are about never saying anything that might offend their base.

One part of me that I often struggle with is my level of creativity. I never think I have enough. Yeah, I know it takes creativity to blog the amount that I do. I think I have created somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousands post on my various blogs over the years but the creativity I think I miss out on is the artistic type. I am never satisfied with that aspect of my life.  Here is a quote from Ernie to start our discussions in this area.

You as a creative individual have the ability to pursue interesting activities. Creative expression is the natural inclination of life.  Keep reminding yourself that retirement can be a series of adventures and wonderful discoveries because deep down you are a creative person and not a boring one.

Researchers at the University of Southern California confirm that variety is the spice of life. They found that individuals who regularly do new things, such as going to places they have never been or playing a new game, are happier and have a greater sense of well-being than people who keep doing the same old things. The researchers concluded that people with many interests live not only happiest, but longest, too….

Don’t lose touch with the craziness within yourself. Often one gets a reputation for mental stability simply because one doesn’t have enough courage to make a fool of oneself. Is it more important to live with zest or to have people think nice things about you? The point is, if you want to be truly alive, forget about what people think. Zelinski, Ernie  How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor (Kindle Locations 1872-1874).

 Doing new things does make me happy. I seem to abhor what I consider stifling routine. I do have many interests, I always say my hobby is having hobbies but I don’t seem to spend enough time at any of them in order to get the level of satisfaction that I want. Another book I am reading is entitled “Creative Photographer” by Catherine Anderson. Here is snippet about what she says about creativity:

It is important too me to spend some part of my day in creative activity. The process of creating seems to balance and calm me… I think a daily connection to our creative work is how you grow as an artist. To be a good photographer you need to practice. 

I don’t know if it is possible for me to lose my craziness within myself. That is probably one of my most distinguishing characteristics. I don’t particularly care that some think I am crazy, as a matter of fact I actually take pride in the fact that people can’t predict what I will do or say next. 🙂

Lets finish off this post with another native Hoosier and one of the most creative people of his generation.

I’m eighty-one now. I would have been eighty-two, but I lived a year in Winnipeg. — Red Skelton

 <<<This is part of a continuing series of my year-end discernment period. Scroll down the center bottom footer to see the earlier posts list>>>

They teach themselves from an early age, have many deep interests, rather than just one. And they are very persistent, even in the face of rejection…. One interesting thing that’s emerged is that so many of these highly creative people are autodidacts. They are people who teach themselves. That makes them almost misfits in the educational system that they get put into. It would be nice if educators were aware of the existence of autodidacts and the need to give them slightly different education experiences, to nurture them. SOURCE: Connecting strength and vulnerability of the creative brain.

The source quote above came from a recent PBS Newshour segment on the link between genius and what we call mental illness. I have downloaded the original article and will likely do some additional post on related areas of it in the near future but for now I want to talk about one aspect of this article which is autodidacticism.  It was only a few years ago that I discovered the term “Autodidacticism”. Here is how Wikipedia describes it:

Autodidacticism or self-education is self-directed learning that is related to but different from informal learning. In a sense, autodidacticism is “learning on your own” or “by yourself”, and an autodidact is a self-teacher. Autodidacticism is a contemplative, absorptive procession. Some autodidacts spend a great deal of time reviewing the resources of libraries and educational websites. One may become an autodidact at nearly any point in one’s life.  Many notable contributions have been made by autodidacts.

I was surprised to learn that this is actually a defined process because it fits me to a “T” even in my early years but especially after I became deaf at the age of forty. Except in college where I didn’t have the physical hours to do it, I have always been off studying something on my own.

You could say that autodidactisism is just a fancy word for “self taught “but I think it goes beyond that concept mainly in its intensity.  Some of the more famous examples of autodidacts in history are Leonardo da Vinci and Abraham Lincoln but there are thousands of other accomplished creative people who fit that label.

In my earliest years I spent hours reading books by various American authors particularly John Steinbeck, Jack London, and other of that genre. I often read before I did my homework as the latter just bored me. I think I gleaned my leftist tendencies during that period of my life and just didn’t realize it until much later in life.

I have always been a self-study even before I was deaf but especially after. Communication in classroom type activities just took too much energy that I thought was better spent just doing the learning myself. After many many hours of studying and practice I became recognized as the guy who really understood software development. I taught myself to program in several different languages and made up tools to help me in my work that ended up on many others desktops. It was not until my work got the attention of a passing vice-president in the very large corporation I worked that I officially made the switch from circuit design to software tools. It was where I actually belonged in the first place.

Being an autodidact is just who I am,  even before I know it….

I have never really been much of a team player. I was just too much of a loner during my early years. That and an irrational sense of inferiority kept me from even attempting to belong to a team. I just didn’t take marching orders very seriously. Team speak was against my very nature.  How did that affect my life, at least in the first sixty years or so? That is what this post is mostly about.

During my early years I seemed to march to a different drummer so to speak. When someone would tell me I must do something because that is how it has always been done I tended to rebel against that action for that very reason.  I wanted to know  why I should do something and not just trust others that I must do it. “WHY” has always been a central theme of my life. I never outgrew it as most seem to do.

Being a loner was well, lonely once in a while but I decided that is just who I was. I was that contemplative kid who would spend hours on a summer night on my back looking up at the stars and dreaming what I would be doing in the future.  I was different from many kids around me and didn’t really know why. Maybe it had to do with being abandoned by my mother at the early age of nine. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I grew up without the female perspective in my life.  I just didn’t trust others after that point in time. Being a loner has many advantages as well as a few disadvantages.

Creativity is not a team event. It almost always occurs to a single individual. Design by committee (team) is usually considered a derogatory phrase meaning anything designed by a group is most likely inferior to that dreamed up by a single mind. The power of oneness thrives in the creative sphere. When at an early age, I read the biography of Einstein and found out he was a loner like me I was encouraged that maybe this condition was not as bad as I might have imagined.

My creativity is one of those areas that I don’t think would be as prominent in my life if I had been more of a team player. I am a creative person in some regards but not in others. I wish I was able to draw and paint at a creative level. There are many areas of creativity that I stumble with and that frustrates me to some degree. Writing is not one of them. It has always come very easily to me. That creativity I celebrate almost every day.

The power of oneness is enriching.

Now that I set my own schedule I have found that sometimes not setting a schedule is the best option. Up until my retirement I was the epitome of a planner. When I started my professional work life in 1970 I used to fill out a weekly 3 x 5 card with everything I needed to accomplish that week. When desktop computers came in the 1980s I switched to it for my weekly schedule.  I put my six-inch pile of cards in a drawer and proudly kept them for twenty years. I was a planner and proud of it.

When I retired in 2000 that habit carried over into my private life.  Part of the reason for that is all those retirement gurus out there that said if you don’t plan you will likely not do much of anything but be a couch potato. I took them to heart. But slowly over the intervening years I weaned myself off the need to schedule ahead of time what I would be doing. It has only been the last three years or so that I grudgingly gave up the weekly list. I am still a planner but not anything to the degree I was in my younger years.

One area were I have found planning just didn’t work is in my creativity. It just seems that I can’t say ahead of time that I will create this or that at this or that time.  My creativity comes in flashes instead of schedule minutes.  I seem to always get my creative work done before noon. I’m sure this has been mostly true throughout my life but I simply refused to accept that fact. Much of my creativity is now spent on producing about a thousand posts a year on my  blogs.  Sometimes I can sit and write a dozen posts in a morning. But some times nothing comes to mind. It seems I simply can’t schedule when I will be creative in this arena.

From my studies in this area I have seen this to be true for others besides me. I know there are famous writers who say they must sit and write for “x” number of hours each day.  But I kind of imagine that the most productive hours come and go without plans. What makes one person more creative than the next and what makes one period of time more creative than the next?  What makes one person an accomplished artist and another not even able to draw a stick figure? What makes one person good with words and another unable to even write an understandable note? I don’t know…

You are hardly alone if you believe that humanity is divided into two great camps: the left-brain and the right-brain thinkers – those who are logical and analytical versus those who are intuitive and creative. For years, an industry of books, tests and videos has flourished on this concept. It seems to be natural law.

Except, it isn’t.

SOURCE: There is No Left Brain/Right Brain Divide | TIME.com.

I think this story is missing the point when it comes to right brain vs. left brain.  It is not so important to whether the differences are in the left/right or the top/bottom but that they do indeed exist.  Many times in my life I really wish I was more creative than I am.  But it seems I am stuck with the analytical prowess over creativity.  That allowed me to become a pretty proficient information tech guy who designed and wrote several “specialized-killer-aps”.  But I just can’t seem to come up with a really creative header for this blog.  Even after hours of attempt. 🙂

There is no doubt in my mind that a degree creativity is something more ingrained than learned.  Some of us are just much more creative than others.   Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am without creativity.  I understand that starting and maintaining this blog requires creativity. I pride myself in being able to look at things from a different view than most. After I left the corporate world I spent seven years designing and fabricating cabinets and furniture for some pretty discerning customers. I know that is my creative side coming out but I sure wish I had more of it. Then again, maybe I am just a creative hog and can’t ever get enough of it.  I seem to always want more! 😉

Getting back to the source story, being a scientist I understand the need to be precise in our understanding but I kind of think the left/right brain thing is more conceptual than physiological in nature. We all hear the stories about how the brain is able to re-wire itself after some traumatic injury.

There is much to be still learned about the function of the brain. I believe we are on the cleft of some pretty outstanding discoveries in this area.

When I was a teenager it took a bomb to get me out of bed. The first class of the day in high school started at 8:00am. I can barely remember much about them.  When I was in college I was plagued with many 7:30am classes. The only “D” I got in college was in speedy reading. I just couldn’t manage to concentrate on the totally boring things I was supposed to be reading during that hour. For the most part that time was spent “sleeping in” and therefore the “D”.  Over the years that condition has slowly changed. In my work life I seemed to be about as productive in the afternoon as in the morning. But now that I am in my senior years I am a full-on, in-your-face, morning person.

Eighty percent of the ideas and post compilations for this and my other blogs take place before noon.  The creative side of my brain seems to almost shut down by lunch time now. I spend most mornings at the computer reading the day’s news or writing post for my blogs. Some days are more productive than others. Sometimes I can generate a half-dozen posts in an hour and sometimes I just can’t keep my mind on one topic at a time.

That is one of the advantages of being retired is being able to spend your time as you want. Whereas I was required to be “productive” for 8-12 hours a day from Monday through Friday in the corporate world, now I can pattern my days around my spurts of creativity. When I am lethargic I take naps, do an occasional picture puzzle or just veg out. But when I get the creative bug I might spend hours at a time very focused on the task at hand.  My wife has come to except that there are times when I am “out of it” has she deems it.  I am so focused on what I am doing that the world just seems to be passing by outside my small office room window. Most of those times are in the morning when she is sleeping in. She is a night person and I am a morning person. That gives us both our special time by ourselves and we all need that type of time.

I have brought up a new blog at RightBrainScreaming.net . This one will be used to flex my creative muscle. As I mentioned before my right brain which controls creativity has not had much exercise in my life. Being an engineer I lived primarily in the analytical world. So my right brain has been screaming for attention lately!

I needed a different format for this one so that is why it is on a new blog instead of a category here.  As well as eventually displaying some of my creative splurges  I will also be celebrating others creativeness in posts. Starting out, until I get up to speed with this new process, I will likely be posting more in the later category. This will definitely be a different type of blog, much more visual and lots fewer words. I hope some of you will enjoy it.