This feels just like a vision board. Bloomston says “your mission statement is one way to water your grass” (pg.85). I’ll have to believe her and try.
“In this chapter we’ll write a so-called non-business ‘business’ plan — a creative mission statement” (pg.85). In the course of this exercise, she asks us to toss out the “Photoshopped perfectionism” (pg.85) of our creative life. We all know what that is, sometimes called Instagram. 😉 Creative life is not “all tied up in a pretty bow and stylized like a cool magazine lifestyle shot” (pg.85). We “have to start with” our “feet on the earth, even as” we “reach for the stars” (pg.85).
Carrie has a worksheet that will help us envision a creative life. She suggestions that we “look back in our family history” for a “passionate person,” a grandma who loved “to can peaches,” an “uncle who tinkered away in the garage making wooden benches” (pg.86) for inspiration. She wants us to “close your eyes and picture yourself in your creative life. See as many details as you can. Be specific” (pg.86). The worksheet has good and specific directions for filling it out. Photocopy it so you can use it over and over.
You can see the last post on this topic from last week.
Nota bene: we are working through Carrie Bloomston’s book, The Little Spark. Buy it. Support the artist. Play along. There is much more to each spark than what I am writing. The original chapters will help you. Go buy Carrie Bloomston’s book, so you get the full benefit of her fabulousness! You can see my book review, which is what started this flight of fancy.