Today is the Moon Festival! The Moon Festival is a celebration honoring the moon. It is a Chinese festival that goes back two thousand years. It is a celebration of the harvest, but more importantly it is a celebration of family. And there is a special cake involved, so that is pretty cool This celebration is connected to the tale of Chang’e – known in Chinese Mythology as the moon goddess. The story given as the origin of the Moon Festival is about how Chang’e became the goddess of the moon in the first place. Long, long ago, a beautiful young woman named Chang’e lived in a palace. It was not just any palace – mind you – it was a heavenly palace. It was the Jade Emperor’s palace to be precise. And in this palace in heaven lived immortals and fairies and other strange and magical beings. And it is to this palace that good people go when they die. So one day Chang’e was playing in the palace and carelessly broke a rare, …

Procrastination. This is something that I think we all suffer from, especially when dealing with creativity. What is something you are procrastinating on doing? If you are like me there are several different things that are being put off till later. Sometimes procrastination gives us time to think, to analyze the projects ahead, and can therefore be rather useful. But when we continue to push projects down the road, there may be something brewing that is not useful at all. Fear. Fear can be at the root of both procrastination and of perfection. Fear tells us we should not start yet ‘because we aren’t ready’, or ‘because there are more important things to do’, or ‘because it wont be good anyway so why start at all?’ Fear even tells us that it wont be perfect (which it won’t), and therefore is not worth doing at all (which, of course, it is). There are tricks to pushing past procrastination, you can find them with a simple google search. But ultimately, like anything, creative action requires practice. …

Today is Skyscraper day (according to ‘Holiday Insights’, a website I found). It is a good day to take a moment and think about the ingenuity and fortitude that went into creating these gravity defying beasts! For those in Chicago – did you know that from 1974 to 1998 the Sears Tower (Willis Tower) was the tallest building in the World? It was then kicked off of its pedestal by The Petronus Towers in Malaysia. Since then many buildings have scraped the sky pushing Sears Tower down to 21 on the list. Still pretty respectable though! But this isn’t Sears Tower day, it’s skyscraper day! Tell a story about an angel and djinn meeting at the peak of the Burj Khalifa. Draw a picture, write a poem, sculpt a model of your very own skyscraper. Or you could research the life a skyscraper in your favorite city. There are so many options! P.S. The Picture is of The Hancock building

Did you know that today is Nation Cherry Popover day? Neither did I! I don’t know about you, but I LOVE cherries. In fact, I am going to go out and get myself something cherry flavored right now. I know it is late in the day for this prompt, but what can you do that is cherry related? Draw a picture, write a poem, take a photo of your cherry popover, write a story about living inside of a cherry pit – the options are truly endless. If you don’t like the adorable sweet stone fruit, than write about what it’s like to be an outsider in a cherry world. Have fun!

Today, on the second day of September I would like to introduce this month’s promps. prompts are a great way to inspire creativity when we are at a loss for something to do. But prompts also challenge us to push past our comfort zones, they force us to think outside the mundane, and introduce us to new ways of being in the world. This month there are daily prompts, weekly prompts or a monthly prompt to explore in detail. The monthly prompt is ‘GIFTS’. The Weekly prompts are ‘Gifts, Pets, Gratitude, and Neighbors’. All these prompts can be looked at from many different angles. But right now I thought I would talk for a second about ‘Gifts’. When we think of gifts the first thing that likely comes to mind are things given or received without the expectation of payment, usually given at specific times of year or for a particular purpose. Too often, gift giving becomes a culturally expected ritual, performed perfunctorily as a fulfillment of an understood, if not explicitly stated expectation. But …

Sometimes things get difficult. I tend to set big goals for myself, goals I know I wont accomplish and then when I fail to meet those goals, I call it a failure and don’t even try. That is not exactly why I have lost steam on this particular project. Yes, I set goals that were out of reach, but I always intended to go back and start working on them again. But things have been so crazy. A puppy, for instance, is an adorable monster that turns your world upside down and robs you of all your sleep. Add to that my general affinity towards chaos, and it has been rough going. I kept thinking to myself, ‘if I can just get this or that done, then I can start working on creative things,’ but of course that never happens. So here I resolve to not let the search for perfection be the death of doing. I’m sure there is a better way of saying all that, but did I mention the little black monster …