Cultivating Creativity

I gleaned new meaning and inspiration this second time reading Chapter 5 of the book Launching the Imagination by Mary Stewart. Overall the main message I gathered from this is that being creative is about achieving balance. What it doesn't seem to mention is that you need to know what two things you are balancing. Balancing opposites is obvious, but also vague and not always exactly what is needed. You can also balance two similar ideas or notions, like finding the balance between pride and excitement. You must balance how much pride you may have for a piece without appearing overexcited or unprofessional at a gallery opening for example.
Reading over cliches and old tales can even have new meaning if you read it at a different time in your life, with a different context. Patrick, a Visual Dynamics professor, read the Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare to us in our first day of class, and though I of course knew it and had heard it over and over again as a child, sometimes the message can lose its effectiveness or impact over time. Now, I have a newfound appreciation for moderation and steady paces. I used to consider the tortoise's position good for someone who couldn't go any faster, and still accomplishes the same goal, but now I have come to realize that taking "speed" as a literal interpretation is not the intended meaning. Pacing one project's speed is how I saw it, but now I see the race on a more expanded timeline of a person's life. There's no need for me to think I can't go back, can't appreciate the present just because I've been told to look forward to the future. The future is always there, and I am always here. I took the paragraph headings of the Time Management to heart this time reading it, and made each a post-it note on my wall to remind myself of simple solutions whenever I might get despondent, desparate, full of despair, and look to the sky to shake my fists in fury, and instead be calmed down by rational words. If you're curious as to my first analysis of this chapter, check it out here. Question to the class: Did anyone notice an obsession with the letter c, and which of the words starting with the letter c mentioned in this chapter meant the most to you?