Waiting and Creating

“If art doesn’t make us better,” Alice Walker said, “what on earth is it for?” I found these words in Claire Cook’s book, Life Glows On.

My sister, Barbie, gave me this book and two others by Claire Cook – Shine On and Never Too Late – for Christmas. She’d remembered a conversation we’d had in the spring about how I’m feeling lost. My kids are all grown up. My days no longer revolve around children and mothering. So what do I do next? What is my purpose in life? Maybe these three Cook books will help me find some answers to these questions.

The subtitle of Life Glows On is Reconnecting with Your Creativity to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life. Here’s the Amazon book description:

Packed with fun ideas and solid, practical strategies for reconnecting with your creativity and making the rest of your life the best of your life. Ditch all those worries about getting older and embrace what can be the most vibrant and empowering chapter of your life.

Equal parts creativity guide, mood boost, midlife manifesto, self-help salve, and breath of fresh air. 100% witty, wise and generous Claire Cook, who shares everything she’s learned on her own journey that might help you in yours. Filled with great stories and insider tips.

If you’re a forty-to-forever woman who’s interested in making your life glow on, don’t miss this inspiring and motivating book.

Instead of constantly complaining, “I don’t know what to do!” perhaps I should focus on my creativity. Maybe my purpose will become clearer as I’m playing around with words, photos, videos, graphics and all the other things I enjoy.

And maybe all that creating will be good for me. Will it make me, as Alice Walker could be suggesting, a better person? We all know that other people’s art in all its forms can inspire us to grow and achieve great things, but can our own work teach us about ourselves, God and our purpose in life?

So, I’ve been creating. Recently, I’ve made a few short videos. If I were on social media, they’d be called reels and I’d share them with the world and, hopefully, get a few views. But as I’m no longer on Facebook or Instagram, they’re my documenting-my-life videos. After making one, I say with great excitement, “Do you want to watch my video?” and my kind family replies, “Oh yes!” Then after they’ve viewed it and made some encouraging comments, I text them a copy. Maybe they want some video memories of their life too.

One of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon is to sign up for a free trial of an app. I play around with it, see what it can do, and then I usually cancel my subscription. But, occasionally, I want to keep an app, and add it to my stack of creative resources. This is what happened when I explored the video editing app, Power Director. Since discovering it, I’ve been saving Live iPhone photos as MP4 files, importing them into the Power Director app, and then adding filters, transitions, music, text and special effects to make fun memory videos.

Here’s a 15 second video I made using a few phone photos I’d snapped while having lunch with my husband Andy:

Andy and I often go to a cafe for coffee or lunch. Usually, we go to the same couple of cafes, our favourites. I always snap a few photos while we’re waiting for our order to arrive. To the casual observer, all my photos might look the same. Why do I keep taking more photos of the same man, often wearing the same clothes, in the same cafe, drinking the same kind of coffee? Well, creating videos has taught me that there’s always something special about each cafe visit. Each one has a story of its own. In the above video, you might guess the highlight of our lunch was Andy’s expression when he saw his grilled chicken salad. It was a magic moment. Andy hadn’t expected his plate to be so large. There was enough chicken salad on it for both of us. Next time, we’ll order one chicken salad to share. And it’ll taste extra-special. Shared food always does, doesn’t it?

I captured something different in this next cafe video: I wanted to remember how we smiled when I kept accidentally putting my thumb in front of the camera. I could have labelled those thumb photos as failures and moved them to the trash can. But I didn’t. I made them into a video because, despite their imperfections, they are important. Our lives are made up of imperfections, aren’t they? It’s the imperfections that make life interesting and give it spice. We can transform imperfections into something else. My not-quite-right thumb photos became a video which now makes us grin!

Yesterday, on our way home from Mass, Andy and I stopped at our local Oliver Brown cafe for coffee and raisin toast. While we were waiting for our food to arrive, of course, I took a few photos. Looking at them now, I’m wondering what’s unique about them. What story do they tell? When I discover it, will it be a New Year’s Day story full of hope for the upcoming year? Is gratitude at the heart of the story because I’m heading into 2024 with my best friend by my side? I don’t know, but maybe I’ll find out if I do some creating, turning the photos into another little video documenting our life.

I’m still not clear what my next purpose in life is, but that’s okay. I’m waiting and creating. All will be well.

So, I’m wondering…

Do you make time to create? Are you learning anything about yourself and life as you write, knit, paint, bake, edit, stick, or dig in the dirt? Do you enjoy making reels? And do you ever wonder what your purpose after children will be?