Using Your Imagination

When I was young dad would say 'use your imagination'.  I have always thought I don't have much of one.  However, when I see things I get totally inspired and am able to re-create ideas with little twists of my own.  But I cannot claim to have done anything original.  In fact, no one has for a long time.  We are able to take things and improve on them according to our own perceptions.


What I choose to do with ideas and what someone else chooses to do with the same idea will turn out completely different.  Our imagination is at work.  When we create something, albeit based on someone else's idea, our idea blossoms based on feedback from our family and peers.  I have a memory of an instance which would have fed my artistic leanings from the very beginning.


My brothers had to take summer school in high school, the need for credits to graduate I assume. I didn't want to be left out so I enrolled in a speed reading course and an art class. The art class stays with me to this day, some of the fundamental instruction and the free form projects we accomplished.  My drawing was juvenile at best, a page of rain drops colliding - clustered together, so that all you had on the page was a series of tears.  It was interesting at best.  But Dad looked at it with encouragement.  He told me to use my imagination.  


With that in mind I built on the idea and created a series of faces.  Still juvenile; but the difference was someone encouraged me, saw that I had the potential to create something just a bit unique.

So much from Dad stays with me as a reminder to encourage those around us. His encouragement fed my desire for approval.  I will forever be grateful for his perception of what I could do. What we create may not come from an original idea, but our creativity will make the ending results unique.  Thank you, Dad.

                                                       There was a time when I loved life.

 Amazing that mom thinks that it doesn't matter that I don't have so much of my own stuff, or that what I do have is crammed in corners, laying on the floor in heaps, as she jokes about my recent frivolous purchases.  (I reminded her that when she used to get out and shop she would come home with items that had nothing more valuable than the aesthetic feel it could provide.)  She commented to my son that I would probably not notice it if he cleaned my stuff out of the garage, it had been so long I probably wouldn't even notice.

Amazing to think it doesn't occur to anyone that I hate not having my own car.  This thing that I drive around is what dad chose because he liked the last car he owned so much.....mom could get in and out with minimal fuss.

Amazing, as well, that she thinks I spend my money on frivolous stuff, junk if you will... (self preservation ?) just because I don't have areas that I have staked as things that I could organize and decorate myself has never stopped me from accumulating the silly.

...and amazing to think that I still feel like I am living on the fringe, utilizing someone else's space even though she truly doesn't mind that my things get left on the dining room table or stacked in the corner, and after all this time, I have not managed to organize the space I do have.

She recently made the comment that her house doesn't feel like her home anymore (missing dad).  I understand the feeling, its been so long since I have had the freedom of privacy, or the freedom to decorate a wall the way I would like, to display the paintings I have done.

Why have I needed permission to set the kitchen up the way I wanted?  Because she still uses it occasionally, and doesn't know where I or Dawn or Darcie puts things.  It is still her kitchen, I am just the chief cook and bottle washer.

Why did I stop painting? As far as the paintings go, I have nowhere to display any of them, and it doesn't feel okay to 'create' then toss them around to be ruined.  People don't realize that we sometime allow the minor comments or observations affect what we do.  Guess I let the comment 'don't know what you are going to do with all of those....' bother me.  They could have been Christmas presents.  But they are not painted, because I allowed the comment to influence me.

I am amazed that I have allowed myself to feel this way.  No one would mind if I claimed my life back, staked an area to reflect my personality, actually said, no it isn't okay that my stuff gets lost, ruined or neglected.  After all, don't we control our own lives?