Day 255: Chopping

The goal behind this blog was to force me to spend some time creating/making something every day. That is a pretty vague goal as the question of what does and doesn't fall into that category. I found in my work that I was using the very analytical and detail oriented part of my brain for most of the day and that didn't always leave room for the free, creative, and limitless part of my brain. Part of what I enjoy so much in being creative is calming and focusing myself on a project. Almost losing myself in it. I don't always do that every day but I wanted to be aware of it.

Recently, I've always been paying attention more to the boring, daily, repetitive tasks that we do every day. It use to drive me nuts that we had to do things like brushing our teeth, taking a shower, etc, every day. Over and over and over again. Brush, brush, brush. I'd often think that it would be a lot more efficient if we could eliminate some of those things!

I started thinking about that differently during a painting class that I took in college. I started looking forward to the end of class where I could clean my brushes. It was a time where I often lost myself thinking over what I had just done and what I still wanted to do. I'd squirt the soap into my palm and slowly draw the paint brush through it. I'd rinse it and do the same process over and over. Then I'd clean the sink out to make sure that the color didn't stain it. Every day I would do this and I started really loving that moment when my brain kind of unfocused a bit and kind of breathed in a sense. I've started trying to have that same experience with some of the other daily, repetitive tasks that I've been finding myself in. While it isn't exactly like I'm creating/making something, I've started realizing that these small moments in life are often quite a gift...and it is time to start appreciating them.

So tonight I chopped, chopped, chopped veggies and loved every minute of it.