Despite that fact that I work in what is considered a “creative industry, I’ve been struggling with a feeling that my creativity wasn’t there anymore. Or maybe, it was exactly BECAUSE I work in a “creative ” industry that I was having the problem in the first place.
I’m Jess, one half of the founding duo of Creative Cloud Gazers. I’m guessing, if you’ve found us here, that you’re probably struggling with the same thing I am, or at least some variation of the same: Why do I feel so unable to think creatively?
Let me give you a little more background. I’ve worked as a florist and floral designer for almost 25 years ( pretty much my entire adult life). I’ve owned my own business for almost 20 years. I “create” things pretty much every day. People come to me because of my creativity. Yet I still found myself at the end of last year feeling empty of creative thought. I even felt afraid someone would ask me to go ahead and just “be creative” rather than choosing exactly what they wanted me to recreate. And there in, I guessed after much frustration, lay the problem. I had over time, due to the nature of my “creative” job, ceased to use my creative thinking ability and creative talents, and had in fact begun to work by rote. The client told or showed me what they wanted and I recreated it for them. And recreation is NOT the same as creativity.
So I embarked on a mission to recapture my creative self. I began to follow creative people online. I began to read any and all books on creativity I could get my hands on. I started a daily art practice, where it didn’t matter that the art I made wasn’t good, it just mattered that I kept on making it. And I talked to my sister about my frustrations. And it was at that point, as I started to pay closer attention to what my very creative and super smart sister, Emily, was doing that I had my ah-ha moment. Creativity & creative thinking has to be practiced. And it isn’t about art.
Mind blown, my sister & I started having more conversations about common struggles with creative thinking. Emily works as an early childhood educator. She’s deep in the thick of it, working hands on with kids right at the age when they are their most creative. And even she was noticing how year over year, kids were coming in with less and less creativity, making her role even harder. Basically, Emily’s job is to be creative and think creatively EVERY SINGLE DAY….and to encourage and enable the children in her care to do the same.
And I realized other people I know struggle to be creative too. Over the years I’ve taught floral design workshops to many groups of people, and every time it gets harder and harder to convince the attendees to just try it out, see what happens. They in general always prefer to be told what to do at each step and how to all reach the exact same destination. Which gives a good feeling of “getting it right” but it isn’t creativity.
So Emily & I talked about how much we wished we could help people get past this idea, this lack of creativity and this need to “get it right” over trying something out. At first we thought, let’s organize workshops, like crazy sleep away camp for grownups where we tromp through the woods and collect things and create marvelous inventions from our imaginations for no other reason than to try it out. And then of course, COVID-19 happened, so inperson events went out the window. And Cloudgazing Creatives was born.
An online resource, where we can share our journeys through creativity and our exploration of what works, what doesn’t and what we know and what we don’t know. The sleep away camp for grownups might still happen, it may just take a while 🙂 In the mean time, let’s hang out here!