I totally got schooled today. Totes. Schooled.
I certainly can’t have that, so I got to thinking about yesterday’s Daily Create, which was “Take a picture of a cloud and tell us what it looks like to you.”
I checked the Daily Create yesterday and then looked at the sky. It looked something like this for most of the day:
After a week of 100+ degree days and no rain for forever, yesterday’s showers were a welcome sight. I promptly forgot about TDC #184 and went about my day.
I forgot about it, that is, until I was reading my son stories before bed time. One of last night’s stories was A Fly Went By by Mike McClintock. Kids’ books are weird, and this one is no exception. There’s a lot of talk about guns and animals killing each other. But look what’s on the last page:
CLOUDS!
I was going to snap a picture of this page last night and upload it to Flickr (the cloud in the top left corner reminds me of a shark), but I (a) forgot (b) was lazy (c) was forgetful (d) all of the above.
So let’s talk about re-interpreting.
Shortly after I read that I had invented the lamest excuse ever (truth), my son pulled a bag of poly-fil (the filling for stuffed animals, quilts, and whatnot) off the shelf.
He takes this stuff out of the bag, puts it on his head and my head, and calls it “bubbles” since it looks like bubbles in the bathtub. Do you know what else it looks like?
CLOUDS!
“Here’s your re-interpretation,” I thought as I taped the poly-fill to one of the windows. I had a vision that this taped-up poly-fil would look like clouds in the sky. Do you know what poly-fil looks like taped to a window? Santa Claus’s pubes.
I was close to just snapping the picture and being done with it, but I wanted to make it work. I wanted something that would kind-of-sort-of match up to the image I had in my head.
Maybe taping the poly-fil to blue construction paper with a yellow sun would make things look less pube-ish.
Less obscene, yes. But still lame.
I give up. Jobot and I play with his cars. Jobot drives his cars into the bubbles/clouds/fog.
YES, JOBOT! That’s it! Hand me those planes!
And here’s what we do:
That was fun.
So I got that TDC #184 (even if it was a day late), but do you know what I loved most about the whole thing? The fact that my kid was involved and the process of failing, failing, failing, and then finally getting it. True, these were small fails on what some would consider an insignificant task, but it felt good nonetheless.
So there. #4life. I win. Maybe… there’s still that seven day Daily Create challenge.
Explore your Inner Creativity: The Daily Create
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012Towards the end of 2009, a number of friends on Twitter proclaimed their intent to participate in a project 365 photography adventure, and I decided to rekindle my interest in photography by playing along. Supported in part by @duncan‘s TheDailyShoot, I managed to get into the daily habit of making time for photography, and sharing a photo a day to my account on Flickr. By the end of 2010, I was pleased, not only with the collection of photographs I had accumulated, but with a number of other incidental results:
My enjoyment of the 2010/365 project led me to continue on into 2011/365. Armed now with a self-bestowed boxing-day present, a Sony NEX-5 DSLR (actually, an EVIL or MILC camera, the choice after conversations with @digitalnative and several months investigation), I continued taking photographs, using the new Sony, the older Canon, and the ever-present iPhone to capture daily events and thedailyshoot photo challenges.
However, In August 2011, things got particularly busy (numerous trips, photo outings, and other things), my laptop hard drive became filled to capacity (Aperture and even the OS ground to a slow crawl as space for page swaps became virtually(pun) non-existent), and my habit faltered. September brought the return to school (numerous variables there) and October saw the end of thedailyshoot (after 690 prompts, it folded on October 6th, 2011), and by that time, the habit was upset. Despite a couple of attempted jump-starts (drives to visit the Muse Tree, for example, and the arrival of a new 2012/366 self-challenge), the daily practice of shooting and posting a photo to flickr had been disrupted.
(Perhaps, I should also acknowledge to myself, in hindsight, that I had become engaged in the fall of 2011 with a new regular (though not daily) practice of broadcasting on #ds106radio …)
At any rate, very shortly after January 1st, 2012, @timmmmyboy tweeted out a few test posts related to something new, TheDailyCreate, which would provide a daily prompt, not always for photography, but also for audio, video, and other sorts of creative inspirations. After providing a few test posts, I saw the value in this new prompt source, and decided to try it out.
Skipping forward over February – June, we arrive at July 11th, and what do I see but a challenge from the @cogdog , somewhat uninspired by the recent summer engagement in TheDailyCreate (yes, folks are on summer holidays, relaxing, BUT you still need to nurture that daily creative habit, folks — and to that I can attest!), and so he presents a seven-day challenge. Do the daily create for the next seven days. Starting today. Starting NOW.
CogDog’s Charles Atlas remix “Seven-Day-Challenge”
Now, a couple years back, I employed a “follow 30 people for 30 days” mantra when introducing new folks to Twitter, as a way of helping folks “see, over time” how the social media service could be supportive of their work as educators. And if I recall correctly, research somewhere has indicated a “23-day” adoption period during which a daily application of a routine will result in the forming of a new habit.
So I’m going to prematurely suggest that once you meet Alan’s seven day challenge, you repeat it, twice more. I figure 21 days ought to be close enough to 23 days for you to get the gist. And at that point, why stop?
One caveat. You may find yourself pushed to complete some of TheDailyCreate challenges. I would suggest that if you struggle with one of them, go back in the Archives and complete another one from that same category and post it, with its respective tag, instead. While I’ve not employed that strategy yet, I’m going to deploy it starting today.
In response to Alan’s visual seven day challenge, I reply:
“Twenty-One Days to a Creative Habit” by aforgrave, on Flickr
Get your create on! Get it on on a daily basis. The Daily Create can get you started.
BTW, two days ago, I replaced the hard drive again in my laptop. I’m currently starting out the summer with a glorious 620 GB of free space on my drive. Yesterday, I managed 200 photos on my Sony, and when the battery ran out, I took another 108 on my iPhone. Both batteries are now recharged. And I just “created” that cartoon. Time to draw a Tornado. (There are currently seven posted. Will you ad yours today? Now?)
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