Creative Thinking

When I was a child, one of my favourite subjects was Creative Thinking.  "Creative Thinking", you might be thinking "What is that?"  Well I am aware that Creative Thinking is not a class in all places, but for 3 glorious years I lived in a very unique place mentioned in this post.  And it was there that I took a class called "Creative Thinking".

In Creative Thinking, I was asked to think of possible solutions for problems, and think of inventions I'd like to see.  We drew pictures of these solutions and inventions and wrote about them, explaining the pictures.  Nobody was allowed to have anything that resembled any other students work.  We had to think of solutions on our own.

That's one thing that really annoyed me when we moved away from there: the teachers expectations that my answers would be like everybody else's.  Even in art she'd hold up some sort of example, tell us what to do, and then get upset when I did something that didn't look like every body else's.  To this day, I think her way of teaching was dead wrong.  Is the point of education to be to make everybody think exactly alike, copy other people's work, and be little clones?  Or is the point to encourage learning and individual thinking?  I argue the latter, but many teachers think it's the first.  It mystified me and annoyed me then, and it still mystifies me now.

I waited, thinking that some day I would take another Creative Thinking class.  Maybe it was offered in a different grade?  Maybe some day...  But some day never came.

Until Now.

I have a huge journal, that I bought for something else.  It's bigger than the regular 8.5 x 11 paper, the paper is soft, smooth and creamy white, and it's unlined.  I bought it for something else, but used about 10 pages of it before discarding the project I bought it for.

Well...  I'm going to use it for Creative Thinking.  I loved that class.  It brought me happiness and joy to think of unique solutions and inventions.  Why can't I do that now?  As I said in previous posts I already discovered listening to Raffi while drawing in adult colouring books is still fun, even though I'm adult.  Why wouldn't Creative Thinking class?  And why can't I just sit, with this huge journal, and think of solutions to the worlds problems, and inventions I'd like to see, and anything other creative ideas I have, and express them in this journal.  Why not?

And that is what I'm going to do.  Starting today.


P.S.

You can read about Raffi and Adult Colouring Books in these three posts.

Raffi and Adult Colouring Books

I had an absolutely fabulous day

Adult Colouring Books and Regression.

I had an absolutely fabulous Day.

The day started, like any other.  Yesterday's post was written the night before, but set to post before I got up.  That's the way I post all my posts.

In the morning, like any other morning, I tweeted about the post.  If the post is about nobody particular, I tweet the title of the post.  If the post mentions a person, I tweet about the post, and mention the person whose in the tweet.  If I've written about you, you should know I have, and I tell you so in a tweet.

Raffi, the person I wrote about yesterday, retweeted my tweet, and wow.  All day long I saw my blog post stats raise.  For those of you that don't know, blogger, who hosts this blog, provides stats, which tell the blogger (in this case me), how many people read each post, and a variety of other things.

These numbers, can make me happy when they raise.  I've wondered about this, really I have.  Why do I need external validation?  Shouldn't just simply posting it and having nobody read it, be just as rewarding as posting it and having many people read it?  If I dug really deep into this external validation question, I could make my self sad again, and I'm not going to do that.  I simply don't want to.

As the readers of my post kept rising, so did my spirits.  And now here comes the awkward part of this post.  When this post is posted tomorrow, should I tweet Raffi again?  Would that be like asking him to retweet again?  I don't want to make him feel awkward or obligated (although I wouldn't mind another retweet), but I do think if I write about something, I should tell them I've written about him/her.

The day followed with more colouring, and more Raffi, although this time I didn't really need to listen to it on youtube.  I just sang songs like "Mr. Sun", and "Brush my Teeth", whenever I thought about it all day long.  It became a joke between my mother and I.  "What Raffi song can I come up with for every situation."

And then the evening as filled with watching an extremely funny gameshow called "The whole 19 yards".  Mom and I laughed out loud as we watched this.  It was the first time we watched it, and I'm really glad I found it on youtube.

Our dog was actually the one that wanted us to watch.  In the evening, we often watch youtube videos while laying on Mom's bed, and placing the computer between us.  Tonight our dog made such a ruckus about not going to the bedroom to watch youtube videos, that we eventually gave in and went.   So thanks dog.  But I'm not going to tweet her, because my dog doesn't have her own twitter account.