 Do you ever have that part of your creative process where you’re just about ready to jump out of your skin unless you make yourself sit down and create something? I have been feeling this angst, this low-boil under my skin that can only be satisfied through structure and discipline, through sitting down and working for hours with my hands on my craft. It’s an interesting balance within the creative process, structure and flow… For in some ways, my creative process is about being able to surrender to the timeless space and walk on the beach for hours, watching the myriad of lights on the ever changing tides, admiring the sun and then the moon…moving slowly as if I have all of eternity, and as if all of eternity is right here. My creative process is in mossy wanders through the forest, where the floor is covered leaves and bright orange salamanders, and where underneath the dark-green pointed leaves of wintergreen there are berries for the tasting. I love looking at Partridge Berry and Wintergreen and deciphering which one has the pig nose, which one will give me that crisp minty flavor and which will be mild mush with a few hard seeds. Both lovely. Both connecting me to place. For it’s these moments that I live for, the ones where I am simply human, and nothing matters beyond my meander by the woods or the sea. And yet - the urge to create. The urge that comes from many days of wander and timeless bliss, where a voice inside me shouts, “It’s time to DO SOMETHING”, “You need to MAKE SOMETHING WITH YOUR TIME”, “Look at all this time that is going by that you could have been creating beautiful things, and feeling accomplished about them!”. The melancholy that comes from days without creation where I wash the laundry but only fold it halfway. I see the discomfort in my environment around me - I stop completing tasks fully: there’s a sweater hanging over the chair, the dishes are in the sink, the laundry is in-between the wash and the dresser - and I realize that if I don’t sit down and make something, the days of blissful wander are no longer. Instead they are being encroached upon by spirits of inertia, lethargy, and lostness. I have to rescue myself through discipline. I just need to begin. And once I begin, once I start that first project, I begin to regulate. I realize the longing I had for my craft, the lostness I felt in being apart, and how much I need a creative outlet to feel that I have a place in this world. That I have something to show for my being here. Today I begin again. I am ready to sit down with my hands and create. And I can only hope that the beauty I received from the sun and the sky and the waves on the horizon can be honored in the images that flow through my hands. That people may look at my creations with wonder and awe, and that there be a spark of magic in the exchange. 
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