10 Paradoxical Traits Of Creative People

From Fast Company

“I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude." Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm.
2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time. “It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. These are the dimensions of thinking that most creativity tests measure and that most workshops try to enhance.”
3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. But this playfulness doesn't go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, and perseverance. “Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not. Vasari wrote in 1550 that when Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello was working out the laws of visual perspective, he would walk back and forth all night, muttering to himself: "What a beautiful thing is this perspective!" while his wife called him back to bed with no success.”
4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present.
5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.
6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. It is remarkable to meet a famous person who you expect to be arrogant or supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead.
7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity and femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.
8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.
9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. Here is how the historian Natalie Davis puts it: "I think it is very important to find a way to be detached from what you write, so that you can't be so identified with your work that you can't accept criticism and response, and that is the danger of having as much affect as I do. But I am aware of that and of when I think it is particularly important to detach oneself from the work, and that is something where age really does help."
10. Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. “Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.”

her fire...

a "burner" at heart....

When the rest of the country is celebrating Labor Day weekend, my heart and my imagination soar to the temporary city of Black Rock City, Nevada and the yearly one-week celebration of creativity known as Burning Man http://www.burningman.com/ . I have never been but I fill my creative soul by watching the live video feed, admiring the creative freedom of the art installations, and marveling at the incredible adverse conditions that these creatives are willing to endure just to be in each other’s company and create.  

It is easy to draw the similarities that exist at Burning Man with the collection of amazing artists that lived and created in Montmartre area of Paris France. The excitement and lights of the Moulin Rouge, the enlightened conversations of the cafés inspired them and they thrived artistically.

My body may be sitting in a little air conditioned concrete block house in central Florida, but my imagination is dancing among the creatives that are living for a week in the middle of a Nevada desert, practicing, celebrating and living their art.

                                                                               I am a “Burner” at heart.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/09/photos-of-burning-man-2013/100584/

not thinking....

When my direction in life is challenged, I find that I tend to run back into the art. The question then becomes is the creativity my tool for avoiding the problems or is it a way to deal with them. Tucked away in the studio I can focus singularly on the work. The studio is like my magic room, it is the one place I can go where reality cannot reach me.

Maybe there are times when dealing with reality and the problems of life are better served by not thinking about them at all.

and sometimes, they just "fall" out of me

Some days I struggle, no inspiration, some days plenty of inspiration but the work will not gel and then there are wonderful days like to day.  It just happens with so little effort!

" So just let it go and see where it lands."

not buying the stories....

"The next time you lose heart and you can't bear to experience what you're feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering - yours, mine, and that of all living beings."
—Pema Chodron

2013 Artist'sWay Celebration of Creativity....Deconstruction

And another awesome Summer Artist's Way Group
Dances into the Artist's Way Family of Creatives!

A wonderful exhibition a tremendous celebration of creativity.
What a magnificent summer! 

Worth it?

Have taken a few chances lately, they have the possibility of changing my life, but it is the “let it” part that brings my wheels to a grinding screeching halt. I have so much to figure out. There are dear friends and family that offer with help and advice but I seem to continue to be unable and/or unwilling to accept those offers. I promise I will look at the chances less critically, open my heart to more experiences and trust that these events are coming into my life for reasons that I just do not get to understand right now, but I will someday, I will.

The 2013 Artist's Way Exhibition is UP! DECONSTRUCTION

The Optional Tiara is Still Being Tested…

Fear sneaks into my life and even I forget that the only thing any of us are guaranteed is “now". In an effort to push a perfectly wonderful situation into the future; I managed to induce a full-scale meltdown that opened the door for all manner of ugly emotions to slip in! Control, anxiety and panic took advantage of the fear and marched back into my life in a matter of moments and I watched myself  being reduced to an unreasonable, blubbering and raging ball of doubt.

I sabotaged the peace and happiness of the moment by attempting to control and manipulate how it should look and feel like in the future. It was an ugly desperate attempt to hang on to the magic of now so I would still have it tomorrow. I cheated myself out of the joy that was available to me in that moment by allowing fear of the future to sneak into my life.

A wonderful and wise friend has given me a marvelous new gift. It gives me the power to contain the uncertainties of my future. It is an outrageous fear zapping magic wand and matching tiara! I can confirm that the magic wand works perfectly. The optional tiara is still being tested. There will be follow up reports!

If you've got butterflies entering your life....

My woefully overgrown back yard has been inundated with black and yellow butterflies.  Never less than 10 and sometimes almost 30, but will admit they are hard to count.  They are spectacular!  I cannot imagine what is drawing them here, and then my dear sweet friend began pointing out the obvious and more research turned this up.

 If you've got butterflies entering your life, perhaps you should look at your current situation and determine what stage you are at or what stage a particular issue is either in or moving through. That will help you decide what your next, most effective steps should be.

The fact that the butterflies in question are black and yellow is also significant. Yellow represents wisdom and black creativity. Look to your current situation from those points of view and you should be able to determine what needs your creative, wise attention.

Dave Matthew's Tampa Concert July 2013

It was the most perfect Tampa night!  There was good hard afternoon rain and the night air was cool made for a fantastic Dave Matthews Concert! 

A few beers, fantastic live music and the best company will be a night I will always remember.

And, OMG... Grey Street, did I mention Grey street was the encore!

I was magic!
http://www.cheryljonesevans.com/Grandarch.html

A whole new set of memories that I know we will giggle about forever....

always, always my sweet babes!

Bucket List Time......This time I get to spend an outrageous day, and night with 2 of the most spectacular people in my life. My 2 most awesome grown men sons. I am not sure what I ever did in this life to deserve them. I could shout a million times a day, how proud I am of them and it would still not be enough! I hope one day they will realize how truly magnificent they really are!

Life moved on, and we all got so busy with our lives, jobs, wives, grandchildren.  I want this chance to recapture the playing, the laughter and love we shared when we were all younger.

A Dave Matthews concert in Tampa, and looking forward to too much beer, silly booty shaking and the chance to make a whole new set of memories that I know we will giggle about forever! 

Head phones ON...Volume UP...World OFF!!!

3 days and counting DMB Tampa 2013

Can you hear me?

A night of Dave Matthews, too many beers, dancing and my boys (both of my phenomenal grown sons) might be exactly what I need to blow up this funk I am in.  I am ready to go!

Liar...Liar...Liar

Oh be still my heart, tell me this is true! This fear thing has been overwhelming recently; do not know where it came from, or how it could have possibly slipped into my life, undetected until it got such a horrendous grip on me.

Exploring new mediums, the loss of my sweet little girl kitty, pushing through and having to face some physical boundaries, and addressing, not so successfully some personal boundaries may have opened the door and let all of this fear into my life. I do not like it….I do not like it at all.

Liar….Liar….Liar

Open, Open, Damn it, Open

Why am I hanging on to the old proper, do good, closed self, a self that I recognize but do not like. I thought I had walked away from her to pursue a more open and accepting full life. 

Why can’t I let go and truly open up? 

I look back at some of my work and I see things I did not see when I was creating them. But now the message is clear and screaming at me….. let go, quit hiding, stop planning for the future, expose yourself, all of yourself, open up, open up!   

All of the sudden I see my work is betraying me and screaming to the world “liar” you are not strong, confident, open and honest, you are just afraid.

The "Fixer"

A new monster has tip toed into my life! The “fixer” arrived this week! Apparently hidden way down inside of me, he beckons me to go back into time and fix the things I screwed up. He insists that fixing my past is going to make my present better.

I am working on a project for the Artists Way 2013 Summer exhibition “Deconstruction” and struggling! What seemed to be a easy topic to portray is turning out to be a more difficult subject than I had originally anticipated!

The assignment- Take apart a piece of work (preferably one of my own) then reconstruct it into a new image. Simple, right? Wrong! Why is this giving me such a hard time?  

This work requires I step backwards look at and study previous and perhaps “not so great” creative decisions.

An internal argument has erupted between the “fixer” fanatically working to take apart an old piece to correct my mistakes, and me that just needs to take that old work and make something new in spite of the mistakes.  

Much harder than I had originally thought, and I furiously beat back the “fixer”.

Courage

"There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew." — Rumi

The secret medicine is courage. Courage to let go.  Courage to grab on to.  Courage to see every situation for what it is, not what I want it to be, or as others might see it. Courage to accept that the ones that love me the most will never ever really understand how truly frightening this can be at times and how I chose to handle it.  The courage to follow my heart is what I need more than anything.

Why not me??

Yesterday’s noon news included one of their “health” reports, which I typically ignore, but this one was about the glorious results that were being recorded with the cardiac stem cell clinical trials. The very same trial that 2 years ago I actively campaigned to be a part of. I was on the short list for both Johns Hopkins and Shands but after extensive and invasive testing, I was inevitably deemed “not a viable candidate” for either of the trials. I was so sure I was going to be accepted, and was emotionally devastated, by both rejections. 

I have moved on, put the rejections behind me, but perhaps not as well as I thought. As the news video continued to broadcast this particular stem cell recipients glowing recovery, I found myself overwhelmed with those past feelings of elimination, anger welled up and I find myself wallowing in negativity.

I am angry, I want them to tell me, right now, why not me. Why didn’t you choose me!

I Chose the Blindfold

I chose this blind fold.

I have spent a lifetime carefully choosing what I did and did not want to see. The selection process was never based on fact, but on my life experiences and pre-programed expectations.

Realizing now that there is so much still to see, the question is “do I want to see it, experience it?”

The questions well up and I cannot decide if I am ready for so much truth.