Creativity and Trying to Find It

I like to think of myself as a creative person. Actually, I'm confident in saying that yes, I am a creative person. The problem, though, is honing that creativity, finding something to channel it towards, something that will stick and not just be some fleeting one week hobby. Let me briefly talk about a few things that I have enjoyed in the past or am currently enjoying when it comes to letting my creativity flow (read: these are things that I got obsessed with and probably spent a good amount of money on only to let them fall by the wayside).

For a while, I was really into watercolor painting when the design is already printed on the canvas and I just have to pick the colors and do a little blending. I'm not even creative enough to come up with my own designs, my God. I can't draw but I love coloring inside of the lines. Wait, coloring books. That's another thing I did for a while and gave up. I still have them all, along with scores of colored pencils that have been forgotten and randomly placed throughout my house. This hobby has kind of been transitioned into planning and journaling; I have so many pens and markers and I love making my planner my own with washi tape and experimenting in my journal with different colors, writing styles, and layouts. 

Is trying to raise plants creative? I think it is. Last summer, I found the little tiny plant starting kits in Target's dollar spot area. Some of them actually germinated, some of them didn't. I tried to transplant the sunflowers (that were doing quite well) into bigger pots to prepare them for the outside world. That didn't work out. None of those plants worked out. I was given a hanging plant from a regular at work who didn't have room in her house to bring it inside for the winter. So far, so good with that one.

A few weeks ago, what did I find, once again, at Target? Plant starting kits. I bought four: sugar snap peas, mini roses, forget-me-nots, and daisies. So far, all of them but the roses have sprouted. The peas are doing quite well! We will see how this progresses as time goes on. I just want to raise a little plant baby, dang it!

I enjoy baking, but I was never really that adventurous with it or just used boxed mixes and things like that. Now, though, I'm starting to get more into scratch baking. My mom bakes a lot for work and I admire her so much. I don't know if I'll ever be able to whip recipes out of my mind like she does but I can try, right? I recently made a couple of fruit-based bakes, a lemon blueberry yogurt loaf cake and an apple berry crumble, and I think they turned out really well. Next week, I'll be baking some cookies and brownies for when my boyfriend comes to visit (and if they don't turn out that great, well, he will still eat them). I want to purchase a baking cookbook soon and start digging in and I especially want to explore things like breads or rolls or things that aren't just sweet.

Writing. Where do I begin? Every once in a while, I get the writing itch. I participated in (and won) NaNoWriMo in 2015. I have never read that story back, I've never thought about editing it, I just was happy that I got over 50,000 words done in a month. I started Camp NaNoWriMo in 2016 but that round was far less productive. Last November, I was going to take a more untraditional route and use the month to plan a novel (instead of writing one) and I did good for about a week before it all went to crap. I just get the itch, scratch it for a day, then move on.

So let's segue this whole discussion back to books.

I'm going to start a new series of posts here on the blog. I don't annotate my books, like, at all; sometimes I will use page flags to mark things but writing in them has always been something I am not really into. Recently, though, I saw a picture from a Booktuber named Whitney where she had laid out her copies of the Shatter Me (Tahereh Mafi) trilogy, full of doodles and quotes and reactions. "Woah," I thought. "I really want to do that." So begins a new blog series: Allison's Annotations (okay, the name is definitely still in progress). I am going to get paperback copies of some of my favorite books and mark them up to my heart's content. I'm going to re-read them (obviously) and really think about what these books and these chapters and lines mean to me.

The first several books I have in mind for this project are young adult contemporaries, but I only have one of them in paperback right now so I'll be starting with it. I want to have both a pristine hardcover copy and an annotated paperback copy for my collection because, really, why shouldn't I show as much love as possible to my favorite books? Anyways, the first book I'll be re-reading and making my own is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. As I read more and more, this book can get pushed to the back but, really, it's one of my true loves in the young adult library. It always comes back to Ari and Dante and their love. I can't wait to dive back in and see what their story inspires in me for this project.

I don't know when this post will be gracing the blog because I'm sure that I'll be reading these books in conjunction with others and I really want to take my time with it. Just something to look forward to.