Creativity

I don't consider myself a creative person.  If you give me a model, I'll do my best to re-create it, but I wish I could just imagine something in my mind and create a replica of  what I pictured.

I figure that in my professional life, I've worked so long within a framework of what you're supposed to do and trying to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, that there wasn't much room for creativity and imagination.

When I look at magazines and see pictures of things people used to create a whole new use for something that had been discarded, it amazes me.  I think to myself, "How did they come up with that idea?"  For example, Pinterest has the most interesting ideas.

When I go for walks with Walter, I see all the stuff that my neighbors throw out, and sometimes, I ask if I can take it home.  They're more than happy for me to have it.

I've rescued a cedar chest that someone put out on the curb, and I turned it into a cat shelter for the feral cats who live in my backyard.  Every time Walter went out into the backyard, he'd grab the cat beds in the cedar chest, and he'd tear them up.  I finally figured out how to turn the cedar chest on its back with the opening facing the brick wall of the patio, so Walter couldn't get their beds.  It's so cute to see Linus, James Bond, Jr., Moneypenny, and Sally in their little beds in the cedar chest.

You know what they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention."  Sometimes, that's what it takes for me to come up with new ideas.  Maybe the further I get into retirement, the more free my imagination is to develop.  And maybe it's an awareness that I need to develop.  You don't know you don't have something until you realize that you don't have it.  Now that I realize that creativity is not something that I have developed, I can be more open to expressing my imagination.  We shall see...