Photo Credit: Peter Boden via Flickr Creative Commons
I'm moving at the moment so I've got to thinking about the boxes - box physical and metaphorical. Here's the thing. A creative person isn't just creative in the studio. They are creative in all areas of their life. Whether you are with your kids or at your job, whether you're tidying or painting, you can practice creative problem solving.
I couldn't have written those lines before becoming a parent. Back then -- all of four and a half hears ago! -- my creative life, my home life, and my job all occupied different boxes. As it happens, becoming a parent picks up those boxes, turns them upside down, shakes out their contents, and then spreads their contents around your mental floor space.
At first the "post-box" chaos felt unbearable. I clung to what was left of the boxes. That kind of worked with one. Not with two. In the end I had to accept the disarray of "the new normal".
Slowly, I started to celebrate uncertainty and experimentation. I tried new things. Not a lot at first. At first it was barely noticeable. It was so modest it was embarrassing. I kept my first tiny attempts to myself. But tiny attempts tend to build-up and over time I grew more confident in my "post-box" life.
As an artist you are uniquely suited to taking advantage of "post-box" life. You know, even when it's painful, how to make connections between unrelated things, how to tolerate chaos. You don't need labels and categories. You are skilled at putting things together -- whether ideas or objects -- in new ways.
Now you're a parent too you get to apply this creativity across the whole of your life. You will become a more robust creative thinker because you don't think outside the boxes, you lead a life that is boxless.