Work, in Plain English

A key part of getting yourself inspired is noticing when something is dragging you down.

Reading a creative journal (such as a design annual) can spark ideas, but not always. Sometimes it can be a weighty tome of trendiness, or worse – mediocrity. Bottom line: Hold to what you know inspiration feels like, and keep up the search until you get that feeling.

To paraphrase the provocative (read: can of worms) definitions over at Dictionary.com, to be inspired means to be brought to the state where we can and will bring something into being. (It also means to inhale – to breathe. Is that why a simple walk outdoors can get the proper juices flowing?)

So check in with yourself. If what you’re doing to seek inspiration is not getting you moving (and breathing), do something else.

Very important: I didn’t say resist. If your day presents you with an uninspiring situation, deal with it. Example: I just found out my son’s swim class wasn’t canceled due to rain. Bye-bye $25. I was stuck in Grinch-mode until I remembered to just be ticked off: From there, it took another minute or two to admit it was my own fault for not reading this week’s class email. Again. That made the blame bit an easier bridge to cross, back over to curiosity, a sense of humor… and look! I’m thinking about inspiration again.

We’ve been living in Southern California for three years now, and I finally took my 10-year-old son to Disneyland for his first time last week.
For the first two years, I was either too busy or too cheap, but the guilt was building. After all, I was born and raised in SoCal, and trips to Disneyland were something I could take for granted.

This last year, it occurred to me it might be a good thing that until now, he hadn’t experienced the picture-perfection I had been immersed in growing up with both Disneyland and Hollywood. As it turned out, there were plenty of good things about the day I finally parked our car in the Donald Duck section.

We had a fantastic afternoon, and a magical evening, staying at the park until past closing time. That allowed us to experience a second, line-free and creepy-cool trip through Pirates of the Caribbean (got our own boat, and no one in the boat before or behind us), plus a semi-cooks’-tour of the Jungle Cruise.

One unexpected perk was that I got to do something together with my son that helped me see him as the young man he’s becoming, rather than the little boy he was. After all, we have no shared Disneyland Past. As for the boy, he got to exercise and strengthen his pre-teen critical thinking skills (“How did they build that?” “They don’t miss a chance to sell us souvenirs, do they?”), along with plenty of wide-eyed wonder. That park still utilizes all the secrets of creating an immersive environment, and hypercrafts a world you can lose yourself in.

He’ll never see “Maisy & Bill’s Walk Through Time in Georgia” the same way, but he’ll be eleven in January. He’s already leaving much behind: It’s about time I caught up.