Those middle-of-the-night thoughts…

I sometimes wake up at night, thinking and/or worrying. Do most women do that? For me it’s not an every-night occurrence—it happens in spurts.

When Steve and I were younger and made a lot less, I woke up worrying about money. Steve never did, and he thought I was crazy to lose sleep worrying about problems that would work themselves out. (It takes a lot to make him wake up worrying.) He was right; those worries tended to dissipate with time.

These days I am more likely to wake up thinking about how I’ve managed to do or say something stupid the day before, the week before, or farther back. I wish I could say that I always say and do the right thing. I try, but I fail often enough to wake me up—thankfully, not every night.

What gets me back to sleep is the thought that where there is life, there is hope. Every day really is a new day, with a chance to do better. Goodness knows, I keep trying and maybe someday I’ll be like those people who always seem to know the right thing to say or not say, at exactly the right time. If you do this too, take heart in the fact that you are not alone. We are each of us a work in progress :-).

Creative thoughts…

Then there are the times I wake up with creative ideas. I like this a whole lot better, even if I do lose sleep, which brings me back to the topic at hand… deep thoughts.

Most of us don’t create in a vacuum—our creativity is fed by that of others. So it makes sense to be open to new ideas, new ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. With that in mind, I’d like to direct you to this post by Pam Holland. I especially enjoyed the video she posted. Pam is a beautiful photographer and her images do flutter around in my head. Thank you, Pam, for posting them!

I also very much enjoyed the TED talk by Béatrice Coron, a papercutter artist whose work I had not seen until I found this video (bottom of post). Her work is inspiring, beautiful, and thought-provoking. FYI: I found this talk by going to TED and searching for ‘creativity’. I’ll bet searching for ‘inspiration’ would yield wonderful results as well.

I am currently feeling my way toward new ideas, even as I work on quilts that are stylistically similar to those I’ve made in the past. Once these are complete, I can turn my attention to quilts that are, I hope, completely different for me. Until then, ideas are constantly swirling around in my head, and I’m enjoying the thinking process.

In closing, let’s all sleep well, turn off the worries, trust in a new day, and think about being creative!