The Creative Side of Life

As a self proclaimed perfectionist I tend to stifle my creativity-- I have had and currently have many creative and artistic friends. They are always using things around them to create beauty and feed their creative being. I have several creative bones in my body. When I was little I LOVED to color-- as time went on I learned to use color in a pleasing way on paper. I would pick crayons that complimented each other. I would make up stories and then illustrate the pages. My mother would make me paper dolls and let me color in the clothes. The difference between me and my creative friends is that they are still being creative even now as adults! My perfectionism- aka: Mrs P-- tells me I'm too old to be creative or I don't have time-- the dishes need washing-- the bathroom needs cleaning etc. What is the fun in that?? I want to thank my creative friends and my mother for always inspiring me to look for the beauty in everything and to incorporate creativity and COLOR in my everyday life! So-- join me now and put away the computer- leave the dishes for another time- and get that crayon box out or those poster paints and spend even 15 minutes CREATING! Our Lord was the ultimate Creator and just look at our world!

Before and After

It occurred to me recently how much I LOVE the before and afters of life. It's so motivating to see how things were before and then the after-- sometimes after takes months even years-- like building a home or remodel-- or weightloss-- even pregnancy. However, sometimes the after is only minutes away! As a perfectionist I tend to postpone the "after" of things because I think the steps to get there are long. That's not always the case. Think of cooking or baking-- you start with a clear counter and stove-- then gather your ingredients and within minutes you have created something- hopefully the after is delicious! :) We would not have channels like The Food Network or TLC if it was run by perfectionists afraid to take those steps from before to after. It is so fun to watch a room go from ugly to beautiful or messy to totally organized. The key is doing it in steps- even baby steps.

I decided to use my camera to document the before and after of cleaning my kitchen. It took all of 30 minutes to do this transformation-- it would have taken 15 or less if I had kept up with things to begin with. It reminds me of a bumper sticker-- "Don't Postpone Joy". I tend to do that. Do you postpone joy?

The next time you are tempted to just let something go-- DON'T. Imagine the after and the joy you will feel when accomplishing it and get started!

Greetings! This is a happy day for me! I finally quit procrastinating and started a blog! For months now I have been thinking about sharing my journey in life dealing with my perfectionism. Perfectionism goes hand-in-hand with another P word-- procrastination! I'll bet you didn't realize that they were related, huh?! The first time I heard about perfectionism was in college. I was in my courses for elementary education. Our teachers had us take an inventory called the Enneagram. Most of us were 2 to 3 of the 9 personality types. My biggest type was the Perfectionist! I didn't think much about what that meant until years later. So I like things to be perfect-- big deal...

Now I live with it every day. In 2008 I quit my job as a banker that I'd had for 8 years. My husband and I had been married 4.5 years and had a beautiful 10 month old daughter. For most of my life I just assumed that I'd be a stay-at-home mom and raise my kids. After our daughter was born I had to return to work. Every day I would wish to be home-- "Oh, if only I could be home then everything would just fall into place." Well, when day finally came it was a lot more overwhelming than I expected. The flood of emotions, the lost sense of yourself, the agony of not knowing what to do with your time... I felt all of it. I did appreciate being home in the sense that I didn't want to be back at work and I also wanted it for my daughter. After 5 months of sort of blindly going at it I was at my wits end-- I went online and discovered The FlyLady!

I had visited her site years before but stopped using it after I read that her first step to take was to "Shine Your Sink". I thought that was nuts. What did that have to do with getting things together? So, this time I thought I'd just give it a shot-- usually the kitchen and dishes was the last thing on my mind after a hard days work. That attitude continued after quitting my job. The dishes would pile up on the counters and the sink would be full of gross water and stuck on food. FlyLady said it was perfectionism that kept me from doing those dishes. She recommended that I start with shining my sink! I mean REALLY shine it-- get out the Comet and the Ajax shine it! Then after that the goal was to KEEP it that way-- no more "mystery water" and no more piled up dishes. The perfectionism was giving me that attitude "if I don't have time to do it perfectly then I don't have time to do it at all". I'd never thought of it that way. That day was a turning point in my life.

Now it's been exactly 13 months with FlyLady and I am an official "FlyBaby". I've taken her steps with a grain of salt-- some of them haven't sunk in until now. Mostly I've come to know that my perfectionism holds me back and keeps me from peace and life. I want to share my journey and my thoughts with you. I hope you enjoy it and can even be helped by it yourself!