Creative Courage

Still going on my Christmas Crafting Creativity Buzz, I finally finished my last project of the holiday season.  I know how late is that?  I'm usually more timely with my gifts.  This year it got away with me.  The gift was for one of me "kids".  Who is not a kid any more but a lovely mature young woman in her twenties and working on a cruise ship that sails the Caribbean seas. Miss D. has had the good fortune to graduate from college and get a job working wardrobe on the ship.  "Working wardrobe" in theater is a difficult job.  I don't do it.  When asked to do wardrobe,  I hate to do it.  Now Miss D is the master of wardrobe.  She makes it an art of doing wardrobe.  It's one of her many talents.   I have been able to talk to her off and on during her contract with the cruise line and I've read her blog.  Even though she is doing what she loves and in an exciting environment, she is facing challenges, and she's doing great, by all accounts.  
What I'm learning from Miss D, is the importance of doing what we love for a living, and the courage it takes to work through the challenges.  I feel it takes a certain type of courage.  A creative courage.  What do I mean by this?  Well, it's the courage to use your creativity to meet challenges.  I think most folks can "stiff up lip" things and just get through.  Sometimes that's all the energy we got for the situation, and yet creative courage means to engage the creative process, not to just get through, but make something better out of the situation.  After all, it is your life.  Why would a person want to just get through?  Even under really adverse, crappy and horrible conditions, I feel the way through it is to engage creative courage.  Be courageous enough, find that creative spark to keep the fire of life burning inside.  Sometimes by not engaging our creativity and just getting through something, we forget how to live, we lose a bit of our soul.  It becomes difficult to recover those lost pieces.  I do believe they can be recovered but it takes a lot of work.  I for one really don't like working that hard.
Creative courage is a strength inside everyone that can not be taken away.  Only I can choose to give it away by choosing not to engage it.  Again, for me, it is looking at a challenge; instead of throwing my hands up in the air and taking a "oh, who cares, nothing can be done here." attitude, I ask how can I meet this challenge with my creativity engaged?
So, I created a pirate doll for Miss D.  The women pirates of old, had to be strong.  I don't know if they engaged their creativity in order to live the lives the chose to live.  I like to think they did.  I'm not trying to glorify pirates either, as they the life they chose was anything to glorify.  Certainly not positive.  And I know that living and working on cruise ship isn't anyone's idea of an adverse situation.  Yet I think it takes creative courage to not only create your life your way, but to follow through and keep on living it.
Where does your creative courage show up in your life?  Are you willing to be more creatively courageous in your life?
Until next week...create to feel great!
14 projects complete! 38 to go!