personal creativity

one of the reasons i was attracted to taking this class was that i felt my relative raw creativity (vs. those in my class i saw as highly creative) was low. i thought that engaging with the topic by way of experts, practitioners, academics, and a team would be a great way to develop some creative thinking skills and frameworks. generally, i think this has happened - but it's mostly been in terms of how i creatively manage a team of others that have very different goals for the course and different skills, abilities, etc.

prof. aaker is clearly having me push the envelope on personal creativity as well, and i'm glad she provided that reinforcement again at the mid-point. so i'm going to be developing some creative muscles in a couple new ways:

1. cooking! amy is very excited about this one. she's always wanted to get me more involved in the cooking at home, because it's an activity she likes to share and one that she thinks i can be really good at with practice. it's just that after so many years of growing up in a generally non-cooking household, then living in a dorm, fraternity, and series of apartments with boys, I never got into cooking for either health or fun...it was always just easier to order out or prepare really simple things like pastas. but the creative energy in cooking, as i see it, is (a) getting to talk to amy more when her mind is really on, since she's focused when she's cooking, but in such a way as to be very conversational too; (b) based on the ability to learn from a couple solid foundations (e.g., cookbooks and shows) but give everything my own "flavor" based on taste and preference. that will mean taking some risks and maybe throwing some meals away, but it could also mean discovering something we never would have otherwise. plus, with a real butcher shop and produce market just down the street from our new home, it'd be a shame to keep calling for thai and chinese.

right now i'm committing to cook with amy 2 nights a week, usually thursday and sunday. today, though, as a surprise and as evidence of my commitment, i cooked amy a lemon chicken with veggies all on my own. i followed the recipe since it was my first solo shot in a long time, and i have to say it worked out well, except that the chicken was too bland. next time i will create a marinade for it - it's like putting a presentation together at the last minute. you can just follow the usual power point script, and with most clients and most people you will be "ok," but to really rise to the next level you have to do something unexpected or "off the path." we'll see how it goes next time, but i am already looking forward to it. maybe amy will watch more of the non-detroit random hockey games with me if i cook more, too.

2. home improvement! i'd been really bumming the last week or so about the size of our new place as it became harder and harder to find places to store things. it wasn't that i was unhappy with the condo, it was that we had a lot of work to do to make it a "home," and i was beginning to get discouraged. while i was home over the weekend i thought a lot about what was affecting my mood about the house, and some of it has to do with history and family, but much of it has to do with needing to feel ownership. so i decided i really wanted to get more into the creation of a home here at 317 29th - and the first step is painting! amy and i are in the process of picking out our colors, and within a week we're certain to have one room (a bathroom) painted a new color that we think fits better with the shower tiles and sink. i'm already realizing by doing the color selection that one of the hardest parts about painting is trying to visualize what a room will look like with a new color. sure, there's cool software and really helpful samples, but you can only feel a room by standing in it, right? so i'm trying to "feel" what seems most like home and most natural to me so that i'm happy with our selection. then, working together with amy painting our first house is sure to be something that i get some cool insights out of. how do 2 people collaborate on something like this? are there right and wrong ways to do it? what can i learn from the degree of patience and skill it will take to complete the task in all the rooms we want to do? does it turn out that my (our) vision is correct in terms of how much we like the final product? only time will tell!

3. movies! i'm always impressed by my friends who watch lots of movies. for one, they seem to be better time managers than i am, because i never feel i have a lot of time to watch movies (maybe i watch sports just a bit more than most). but moreover, they seem to be able to recall characters and lessons with humor and ease - and that allows both friends and strangers to relate in all kinds of situations. meet a new person at a bar? talk about a cool indie. stuck in a huge crowd waiting for bart? point in your newspaper to the new flick that came out on dvd and strike up a conversation.

but it's not really about that for me - it's mostly about perspective. over the weekend my mom and i saw the Namesake, which hit home for me for a lot of personal reasons. it really made me want to see more movies like that, where the directors/authors are really shooting straight from the heart - watching how courageous people react in tough situations, how good leaders deal with chaos and dissent, how family members help one another cope with loss...these are all things that it's hard to have perfect archetypes for, and i think that movies provide accessible but aspirational ways of thinking about the world. so i'm committing to 1 movie every 2 weeks. with the NHL playoffs around the corner, this will not be easy, but i know it will be fun.