Chaos and Creativity

Look at this! My torch station, actually clean! I suppose I should have taken a picture of my normal chaos, but I didn’t think to do that. Oh well, it may have been too frightening anyway! Every time I clean my workbench I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, pinky promise, that I will start working neatly.

You know, actually planning what I want to work on ahead of time. Taking out just those colors I plan to work on, pulling stingers and making canes, then making those carefully planned beads. When I’m finished, I’ll put away my rods, and wipe off my work station, so I can have a clean start for my next torch session.

I’ve just described the dream world in my head. My reality is that I often have a plan for a bead, I start to create it, then something goes awry; I misplace a dot or mess up with a stringer, then my bead takes on a new life and becomes something I never meant it to be. Sometimes these “mistake creations” give me great new ideas for future beads or end up being serendipitously wonderful! (And sometimes they end up being, well, UGLY!) So despite my plans I end up working on something totally different.

But what about that apre torch clean up? Somehow that rarely happens. Most of my torch sessions are at night, and I when I peek at the clock and see it’s midnight, and I know I have to be up early for work the next day, I loose my inspiration to clean. So much for my great intentions to actually clean after each session. Of course I could clean before starting, but I’m usually too excited to get working to actually clean. The torch usually wins over the dustpan! And so it goes, until the point where my workbench becomes a glass littered wreck, and then the chaos starts to get to me. I then begin telling myself that I MUST clean before torching, but I still don’t actually do it. Soon I start stressing out about the mess, and at some point it starts to zap my creativity. Sometimes it causes me to avoid my studio, because I know I really need to clean, and I just don’t want to do it, because it’s become such a big job. I hit this point last week. I realized my studio was causing me more anxiety than happiness, to the point where I was avoiding making beads. So I kicked myself in the rear and spent a large chunk of my weekend in cleaning mode. I feel so much better now that I have a usable work surface again! I’m looking forward to resuming torching. The burning question is “Will I mend my evil ways and start cleaning after every session?” I have such good intentions, but suspect I will fail once again. But you never know. Hopefully I will take advantage of my creativity before my world turns to utter chaos again. I will keep you posted!

Linda beads and blogs from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah!