New Year’s Day

A few weeks ago,  my husband and I were invited to attend a lecture on “Happiness” at a friend’s house.  I have always considered myself to be a happy person – and indeed, as our speaker enumerated the characteristics of happy people,  I confess to feeling a smidgen of smugness as I checked them off:  “Yep…that’s me…uh-huh…right on…What?! WAIT!”  It seems that happy people all have creative outlets!

Well, crap.

I’ve let that aspect of my life stagnate for more years than I’m ready to admit in public.  It’s embarrassing.  I have fabulous, creative friends who are artists, musicians, poets, writers, photographers – amateur and professional.

I read a lot, I make my friends laugh, I’m a facebook maven, I’m a great cook; I am NOT meeting my own standards of cool and well-rounded!

Mind you, I am still a happy person – but now I am a happy person with a mission to stretch my atrophied creative muscles.  Now that I realize how I’ve neglected them, I am pacing my cage while I ponder: “What will be my outlet”?  I’m already contemplating Lucille Ball-esque adventures as I dabble in one medium after another.

Part of my dilemma is that I hate to suck at anything.  Excellence is my standard, anything less…well…YES, I’m scared!  I have a friend who writes a well-crafted poem pretty much every day.  I have another friend who started with a painting a day.  She has been an unwitting inspiration to me because her early attempts were – um – not so hot, but now she is really creating paintings I like to look at!

So today, New Year’s Day 2013, I just wrote my first-ever blog post.  Every journey begins with a first step.