Everyday Creative: Being Human

Melanie Sklarz, March 2010

While last month I was just embarking on my everyday creative challenge, this month I am proud to report that I am finishing up my second month. It always amazes me how quickly time flies. But really, I am getting ready to start my third month of this journey? Anyway, I digress into my own humanness, which is ok I learned, because this month was about being human.

To begin the month I was asked to forgive myself and forgive myself for all my previous failures. I think in the last 10 years or so, I have been able to do this and so pretty much breezed past this section. Although, I did complete the exercise at the end of the first week, because I thought it seemed pretty cathartic:

Take a pencil and mark on a piece of paper a line for each of your failures throughout your life (perceived or real). One by one erase the lines while forgiving yourself for each one. As you do this, admit that maybe this one was a failure and let yourself move on from it. Learn and grow from your failures.

The next several weeks were filled with more forgiveness. Forgiving myself completely then forgiving others. By the third week I was ready to wrestle all my demons for one final time. It was here that the mission of the book and my creative journey all made sense. The way to being an everyday creative isn’t bound by learning artistic techniques and skills but rather by manifesting your potential as a creator. Just this slight difference made all the sense to me.
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Everyday Creative: The First Month

Melanie Sklarz, February 2010

Last month I wrote about why I was starting this challenge and this month I want to give you a status update on how I am doing. Going into this, I realized I wouldn’t be perfect, because humans like creativity can be messy and inspiration can often follow a non-linear route. Nonetheless, I am proud to say that I stuck with it (ok, most of it anyway) this first month.

The first week began by making creativity my religion. It doesn’t matter if you already have a religion because this is an addition to your current religion. Like religion, creativity is a way of life that also has rituals and ceremonies. Actually, one of the first exercises is to craft your own rituals for creating. I settled on starting my creative work with a positive invocation and affirmation statement and also working on small sketchbook collages to rev up my creative energy before tackling a big project.
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Everyday Creative: Let’s Begin

Melanie Sklarz, January 2010

Like most years, I decided to start 2010 by dedicating the year to becoming more creative. Usually, my dedication ends up occurring in not so everyday inspirational spurts. I hope this year will be different. I hope my creativity remains constant and in the forefront of everything I do.

So how am I going to manage to pull off this feat? By learning to be everyday creative by following Eric Maisel’s The Creativity Book: A Year’s Worth of Inspiration and Guidance. Yes, that’s a year’s worth of dedication!

I first encountered creativity coach extraordinaire, Eric Maisel’s work when I signed up for his Intro to Creativity Coaching online course five years ago. At the time, I was working as a museum educator, where I was focusing on everyone else’s creativity but my own. The course not only taught me how to empower other creatives but how to focus on my own creativity.
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