A Little Help from my Friends

1. Be discoverers. 2. Be ready helpers. 3. Be friend makers.

The Brownie "B's” (Girl Scouts)

I’ve been trying to get together with my friends Kathy and Jane for over a month, and the crappy weather or our weird schedules have kept us from meeting. Until yesterday. The sun was shining on the snow-covered mountains as I drove northwest to the Mimi’s Café at Flat Irons mall. I look forward to these meetings because they are always fun, the food is good and we swap information and ideas for our various businesses. Kathy is a trainer in conflict management and juggler; Jane is a software engineer and filmmaker; I’m a writer and teacher.

In addition to my buttermilk spice muffin, I got an idea from Jane for my next newspaper column. She was showing a short film last night at the Bug Theater Emerging Filmmakers Project and suggested that, since it is in my neighborhood, I could write about that. Great idea, Jane. I hope your viewing went well last night. Kathy was feeling overwhelmed by her book project and had realized that it would help to start at the end goal and work backwards. Jane and I told her about Barbara Sher’s backward planning flowchart from the book, Refuse to Choose. I made sure Jane knew about the new reality show, On the Lot, for filmmakers, created by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg.

We left fortified by the friendship and inspiration and looking forward to our next time together.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Fun With Work and Learning

"By being flexible, open, creative, and downright audacious, you may find that life has more to offer than you ever dreamed." Susan Sully The Late Bloomer's Guide to Success at Any Age

I just finished teaching my best class in a long time. This was the first time I had taught cultural diversity and I was dreading it for two reasons:

1. It is always a lot of work to prepare for and teach a new class, and this one straddled the Christmas season which added more stress.

2. I had talked to another teacher, whom I greatly admire, about the class and she warned me that it wasn’t a very good one.

I admit that it wasn’t much fun at first, but I had a remarkable group of students who pushed me to be creative. I dreamed up some classroom activities that everybody enjoyed and changed their final project from the typical paper and presentation into a game they would design and demonstrate to the class. We even had a potluck in the last class where everybody brought food from their culture. They brought tamales, homemade pizza, lefsa, and a wonderful Chinese stuffed chicken dish. For dessert we had a Black Forest torte, homemade macadamia nut ice cream (from a Hawaiian woman), chocolate chip cookies and a Puerto Rican ice treat.

The games they designed were patterned after Family Feud, Jeopardy, 1 vs. 100 and Go Fish. They were all fun learning experiences and provided me with great resources for the next time I teach this class.

I learned as much from my students as they did from me, and that’s what makes teaching a fun job. We all contributed something. The students pushed me by telling me when they thought something was boring, and I was flexible enough to change directions mid-stream. A good time was had by all.

When you do anything for as long as I have been teaching (20+ years) things can get stale and you need to shake it up a little. This class reminded me that my work is a creative outlet, not just a way to pay the bills. We should all be so lucky.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Organization Woman

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."

Immanuel Kant

I switched to a computer calendar several years ago and it works great. The recurring appointment feature makes it very easy to schedule my classes and other regular activities, and the reminder feature comes in very handy. I don’t have to carry a big clunky paper calendar around with me, which lightens my purse or briefcase considerably.

For my contacts, though, I still use a good old-fashioned Rolodex. It is much faster to access a phone number or address on my (real) desktop than having to click through several options to reach them on my computer. I have a special little hole punch that lets me fit business cards into the rolodex and I also use it to record my usernames and passwords for various websites.

Periodically, I go through it and remove out-of-date or no longer needed cards. January is National Organization Month, so it may be time to do that again. It’s also time to buy a new package of blank cards for all the new contacts I will make this year.

In the spirit of getting organized, I am also cleaning out closets and getting rid of unused Christmas ornaments, old clothes and linens. The hardest thing for me to part with is books, although I have made great progress in using the library instead of buying every book I want to read. It’s been so long since I bought a book of fiction that my Amazon account no longer recommends them to me.

People tell me that being organized brings greater freedom, so I’m giving it a try. Wish me luck.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

Just Call Me Crafty

"The best hope of success lies in having numerous projects percolating at once; this ups the odds of one of them boiling over." Tom Peters, The Pursuit of Wow

I’ll bet you’ve been wondering what you can do with all those old floppy disks that no longer fit into your computer, right? WikiHow to the rescue. Turn a floppy disk into a starship with these directions. This site will also tell you how to turn a CD into a coaster, but that’s a no brainer. Simply glue felt or cork on one side and voilà, it’s a coaster. I prefer the projects at HGTV, where you can learn to turn a CD into a clock or, with higher level skills, a lapel pin.

These projects interest me because I have finally set up my long-neglected back bedroom as a craft room. The room isn’t finished yet, but I used it last night to start a handmade book. Collages are another big interest of mine and I have been collecting bits of ephemera to use in collages and handmade cards for years. Maybe now I will finally use some of that stuff.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

The Creativity Muscle

"For the longest time I didn't realize I was creative—I just thought I was strange. Diane Ackerman

Creativity, like any other skill, needs both practice and intention to improve. If you think you are not creative, chances are, you’re right. As author Richard Bach said in his classic book, Illusions, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.”

You can change things, though, by changing your thinking. The Bible tells us that we were created in God’s image, and God is, above all, a creator. So we were born to create. In fact, we do create, whether we acknowledge it or not. We have all created our lives, be they fabulous or miserable.

Nita Leland’s book, The Creative Artist, suggests several ways to increase your creativity.

Emphasize the joy of creating, rather than the achievement of results. You don’t have to be a best-selling author to enjoy writing. Every activity doesn’t have to make money to be successful. You can take pleasure in making art that nobody else will ever see.

Develop your skills. Practice and take classes. Almost communities offer short adult education classes in drawing, painting, photography, woodworking, knitting or just about anything else you might want to pursue. You can find classes in local schools, colleges and shops. You could also read a book, subscribe to a magazine, join a club, or apprentice yourself to a master.

Expand your horizons. Check out galleries, museums, and crafts fairs. Don’t limit your curiosity to the discipline you want to study. You can learn about composition from paintings and apply that knowledge to photographs. You can learn how to tell a story by watching a movie or listening to your family and friends at the dinner table. Venture outside your normal scope of interests by browsing the magazines at a newsstand.

Make creative thinking a part of your daily life. Turn off the television and stretch those creative muscles. Vary your routines. Try something new. For a whole day, say Yes to everything instead of No.

Smash creative blocks. When you run into a dead end, try looking at your dilemma from a different perspective. How would Benjamin Franklin solve your problem? How is it like an egg? Pretend that it is the best thing that could happen to you and make a list of the gifts you receive by having this problem.

Remember the well-known Abraham Maslow quotation, "When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail." Make sure you have plenty of tools in your toolbox.

©2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved