Calming the Chaos of Creativity

An outside nook of peace for Sunday Morning Coffee

This morning I padded barefoot out to the patio with my Sunday Morning coffee to start my day with a moment of gratitude. It was a beautiful sunny summer morning and birds were calling all around me. I took a deep breath in of all the color, sound and calm of the moment to save for a chilly, grey winter day when I can recall and revisit this peace.

What you don’t see in this photo, is the chaos of several building and landscaping projects happening all over the yard. R and I have made a big push to get as much done this year as we can to finally finish our landscaping plan we began 25 years ago…..If I focused on the chaos, my whole experience would be completely different. That’s why I always create little places of beauty and calm inside and outside my home, where I can set my gaze and fill up with the pleasure of it. Because both R and I are artist/makers, there is always some bit of chaos and projects happening around us. When I look at chaos, I feel chaotic inside and it affects my creative experience as well as my life experience, so I need those little nooks of peace and beauty where I can bring my focus.

For those of us who have full, busy, active lives, having nooks of peace can be the place that brings us back to our center, to our calm, to our feelings of gratitude. It can be that table, that corner, that spot in front of the window, that one garden bed or collection of pots on the patio. No matter how small or where we create it or find it, I believe we must have that little place of peace and beauty to feed and center our spirit so we can continue to do what we ask of ourselves.