Happy New Year, everyone!

I’m linking up with Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop and answering the prompt: “Instead of a resolution, some people choose a theme word to live by for the year. Choose a word for 2013 and tell us why you chose it.”  This seemed fitting for me since I normally pick theme word(s) for each year.  2011 was the year of ‘Staying Connected’ and 2012 was happily noted as ‘Evolution.’

I think 2012 was the first year I realized that I actually have some creative juices within me.  I never was really an artistic person when I was younger.  I would fill about three pages of a coloring book with some crayon marks (most hitting outside the lines) before I decided I was done with it.  I feared any school project that required thinking ‘outside the box.’  I was enrolled in ceramic classes, but I found a snake-coil-pot-with-a-simple-blue-glaze to be far from artistically tantalizing.

*explanation of picture

 In 2012, however, I discovered that:

As I write more and more, the words, tone and themes of a story take on a life of their own.

Bringing a different perspective to common items is inspiring.

Love stories can be told among even the most simple surroundings.

I am weird, strange and abnormal and I should embrace it.  The most exciting things can happen when you let your guard down.

Maybe these little discoveries add up to something much greater – that being creative doesn’t necessarily mean that I am able to brush a paint stroke.  Among the most simple movements – speaking with a friend, cooking dinner, writing a blog post, loving someone – I can find a way to express creativity.  So, if this is the year for anything then I’d like it to be the year that I live life – every last bit of it – as art.

Here’s to 2013: The Year of Creativity.  May you be filled with more interesting stories, different perspectives and extra weird-ness.  Ok, and maybe even a ceramic glazed pot.

*What is your one-word-theme for 2013?  Do you think you live life with creativity?

**My brother is working down in the British Virgin Islands and couldn’t come home for Christmas so we printed a picture of him, taped it to a water bottle and celebrated the day(s) like he was actually there!  He found all of our random pictures with him quite humorous!