Category: In the Life
I was once called a “creative genius.” Not by myself. Not by my parents. It was a random comment from a complete stranger on the other side of the globe. He’d read my work online, perused my portfolio, and looked through other tidbits of miscellany that I’d scattered about the Internet. I tried my best to play the compliment down at the time, but really, it made me feel good.
Lately, though, I feel like I’ve done nothing worthy of even a passing glance. My “creative genius” has waned somewhat of late, and I place the blame on the circumstances of my career and my inability to recognize the ebbs and flows of my real-world education.
Task number 9 out of 20-something was to perform a random act of kindness either for someone you know or a complete stranger. This could be anything from mowing someone’s lawn for free to paying for someone’s coffee at Starbucks or just baking something for someone else. It was a great task, and something that definitely breaks you out of your weekly routine. Here’s what I did and my reflections on today’s activity:
Think about that word for a minute. Recreation – a compound of “re” and “creation.” The idea that you build something anew. That you do it over again. That you start with a clean slate and without all of the baggage you normally carry. It’s a powerful word, and one that we throw around far too casually to fully appreciate it’s meaning.
Unlike many people I know, I’ve never really suffered from allergies. I was blessed with a resistance to pollen, bee stings, and even poison oak. It’s a trait that’s come in handy many times (as a kid, I once tied branches of poison oak to my arms for camouflage … I figured out what it was later when my friend broke out with huge rashes). This year, though, my immune system failed me and I’ve finally become susceptible to the nasty airborne bugs that pester everyone else.
This past weekend, I went to Seaside with my family to hunt for a few of the more out-of-the-way geocaches on our collective to-do list. We started out just tracking down a few along the sides of Highway 26. It was going fairly well, but at about noon we realized that, by stopping at each and every hidden cache in the forest, we’d never make it to the beach. So we ignored our list and made a beeline for the coast.