Follow Your Curiosity

I watched an inspiring video by Elizabeth Gilbert about following one’s curiosity to figure out pathways in life here . Up until now, Gilbert has always been an advocate of the philosophy to “follow your passion” because that has always worked for her. A letter from a frustrated reader caused her to change her perspective; the reader had been searching for a passion for years, and had reached the point of being depressed because she did not seem to have one. It caused Gilbert to take a step back and think about the pathways of various people in her life that did not know their passions, but discovered them over time. She has now revised her theory about passion to accommodate people who are like hummingbirds – people who flit from interest to interest, and then eventually they are able to look over the field of their lives to see what they caused to bloom. I am one of those hummingbirds. I went through life for years frustrated by the fact that I could not seem to find one passion that really rang true for me. Now the dots of my life are finally starting to come together to reveal what I am trying to do.

One concrete example of how I have followed my curiosity has to do with drawing. Over the summer, I went to visit the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport because I was curious to see how they would present the work of illustrators in a house museum National Museum of American Illustration .

DIGITAL CAMERA

National Illustration Museum

Continue reading

New Beginnings

I created a new blog header for Notes on the Jazz Age:

blog-header.jpg

What do you think? It took me a few hours to set up the “photo shoot” (if you can call it that) and to take a ridiculous amount of photos. I have always loved black and white photography, and I have vowed to learn as much as possible about it through trial and error and studying the methods of others. I also used this image to create business cards; it is perfect timing too because I only have five cards left with my old blog header.

In addition to learning photography, I have decided that I need to learn to draw. I signed up for a six-week class at the museum in Boston. We shall see how it all turns out. You will definitely see the fruits of my labor because I plan to share my experiments with photography and drawing on this blog. I would love to illustrate my stories in the future. Being a visual person, I have always been drawn to books which incorporate visuals and words.

I just shared a few of my creative adventures. Have you tried something totally new and creative lately? If so, I would love to hear about it.