Sherri Cornelius

I feel like organizing today, but I can’t seem to find a place to start. I finally figured out that when I get to this state, it’s because I need to declutter before I can organize what is left. So instead of staring at the mess or moving it from one table to another, I’ll think about what I really need and put the rest in a donation box.

I feel pretty proud of myself for taking what I learned and applying it to change an old habit. For a long time I felt like such a slave to my unconscious (and detrimental) thinking patterns, so it’s nice to have gotten to the point where I can bring them out one at a time and deal with them. I guess this is what they mean when they say you become more of yourself in middle age. You start questioning the things others have drilled into you as fact, and you decide what you believe to be true.

And then, I suppose, most start drilling their own true facts into others, perpetuating the cycle. Is this something we are meant to do? I guess we’re not drilling so much as stating the truth as we know it. Maybe it’s human nature that the first 40 years or so we absorb our truths from other people, because we’re not experienced enough to trust our own truths.

I’ve reached a place where even though I might not be able to state my truth clearly, I recognize it when I see it. I recently saw the truth in a book about creativity called The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. It is a small volume which tells me things I already knew but did not trust. I appreciate its compactness. Not a lot of jibber-jabber to fluff it up to an impressive size to the detriment of the message. I borrowed this from the library, but this one deserves a permanent place on my shelf. I’ll be putting it on my Amazon wish list.

So now I’m thinking a lot about what it means to be a creative person, how to not only accept that about myself but also how to celebrate it, and how to combine my creativity with my accumulated knowledge to let it manifest in my life.