Let’s spin the bottle, why not?

So I’ve been a little neglectful of my darling online journal recently. {AND THAT’S OK! I add later} My creative spirit has needed a fix of Etsy-ness and I’ve been spending lost hours in the Etsy Treasury and convo-ing lovely people and caressing my new Inner Wild Etsy shop. [Um, my third … fourth?]

Cycling in and out of different creative phases easily and without guilt is a bit like an adulthood game of spin the bottle. I remember being made to feel bad as a child about my love of novelty and the potentiality of the new so that I’ve spent years attempting to go against my nature; forcing myself to labor a thing beyond the time I had lost interest.

Oh the damage people can do to us when we are little; moving us away from our own truths to fit their truths of how we ‘should’ be! I have eventually shaken off this feeling of guilt and now feel good about my natural skills in the realms of the nascent and the new inspiration rather that beating myself up for a perceived lack of follow-through.

it is glorious – and incredibly productive in the most fulfilling of ways – to honor your personal creative spirit and the cycles of how it wants to manifest at any given time. Feel like gardening? Do it. Feel like cleaning? Do it. Quick change to feeling like taking a walk? Do it. Your creative instinct knows what’s best for you. And you’re being mindful in a different way in the moment – mindful of your own inner world.

It’s when we apply life’s schedule of work times and pre-planned events that we begin to feel depleted and weary – we are not flowing with our inner creative biorhythms and natural peaks and troughs.

I’ve always cycled my passions so that with the return of a particular true love came a patina of it being a new love, sandwiched and contrasted as it was by others in-between – and always now there are the unbreakable steel cords of constants: motherhood, (child and animals) and writing. This works with my desire for novelty and also lets creative activities contrast and give to one another in a limitless universe of possibilities.

So in honor of flights of surprising whimsy this blog post is a kind of a little game of spin the bottle wherein I have three more breathy topics: one for the boys and one for the girls and one unisex.

The first spin (girls): I have *decided* I am vehemently anti-fashion and opposed to the out-moded circus of commercial nonsense that is fashion editors and media people – dictating what we “should” be wearing each season in an attempt to make us feel insecure enough to BUY more clothes we don’t need to the extent so that we are ‘acceptable’.

Screw that. Wear what you like. I was thinking of devoting a whole blog post to this idea when – wouldn’t you know it! – I discover the blistering irony that I am visionary and MAINLINING global fashion trends in my Etsy shop! LOL

Damn them. It’s just too freaky. Check this out:

– A department store (House of Fraser) in the UK has “Wild Things” as a ‘womenswear autumn 2010 trend’

– The Guardian Weekend says CABLE KNITS are IT for Autumn 2010

– I thought I was very alternative using Isle of Harris Tweed yarn but blooming Laura Ashley is now yabbering on about its “Isle of Harris” knitwear range.

– And, and, AND the Paris Fashion Report – from PARIS – tells us, “After many years of high-tech and structured fashion, the inevitable consequence of our sophisticated, modern lives, we’re going back to the wild. Let’s rebound to our primal state and reconnect with our inner beast!”

Are they copying me? Or am I inadvertently the butt of a cosmic joke wherein I am channeling the world of seasonal “fashion” I loathe; mainlining global fashion trends, editors of Vogue Italia et al via the collective consciousness while I sleep? I laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. *Nervous titter*.

But easing my sense of all-being-right with the world is the second bottle spin (unisex):

I happened upon an extraordinary psychological exploration of The Wild Wood from The Wind In The Willows (the film and its adaptations) as a metaphor for primal fears, depression and our collective unconscious fears and how we react to them as humans. This is a beautiful examination of the human psyche using archetypal themes by MovieMan0283. Please have a look. It is amazing, profound, thoughtful and I think you’ll like it very much.

If, like me, you have ever been depressed, this will remind you of how brave you were in the Wild Woods and how much you learned in there and how fearless you are compared to others who’ve never ventured in there and how much you appreciate not being in the Wild Woods now.

And if you are in the Wild Woods at the minute, this will help you remember you are surviving in a very scary place, that you not alone in there after all – and, I hope, you’ll feel supported in finding your way out, following us who have left you a path if you can see it shining thinly |(we were weak when we left it) so that with every step you take away from the dark Wild Woods you are moving into a safer place, here, outside the Wild Wood looking at it over your shoulder as it gets smaller behind you.

Third spin (for the boys): an equally insightful and exactingly useful exploration of the nature of the Inner Wild Man in relation to the movie American Beauty by Eivind Figenschau Skjellum (how great is that writer’s name!).

Man, you must read this!  I especially loved Eivind’s brilliant concluding bullet-points of magnificence that offer practical advice on how men can liberate their inner wild man to create a happier life: “Powerful ideas from American Beauty“.

So I leave you with these errant bottle spinning surprises. Enjoy spinning your bottle of creativity today.

Image “Never Let It End” borrowed from Photographer Michael Garbutt. You can see more of Michael’s stunning work and even buy prints at Elgarboart and Elgarbo shops on Etsy.com.