Get out of the House

Ever feel like your head is going to explode? That’s how I feel this morning.

I am well rested from my recent trip to Austin and hanging out with Barbara Winter and now I can’t stop thinking.

It started on the plane ride home. The flight was way too bumpy to read my Kindle. (I get motion sickness very easily.) So, at 10,000 feet I pulled out my iPodand closed my eyes. That’s when it started. Between resting and listening, the ideas started to pop like warm popcorn kernels. I kept jotting half formed ideas down. Ideas about everything. I started to see a glimmer of clarity for 2010, something I’ve been missing.

This morning, after a great nights sleep, I was able to pick up where I left off with one big difference…since I was no longer tired, the ideas were coming faster and more furious than I could write. Pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, whatever was handy at the moment, I was jotting ideas and full page outlines down. Some half formed, some fully formed ideas.

I haven’t had this ‘my head is going to explode’ feeling in awhile. I’ve missed it. It is such a high, when I feel all is right in the world, time seems to stand still while at the same time passing without me even noticing it, when I feel like ‘yes, I can do this!”, and when at my core I know I am one with the creative universe.

During a brain break to make a pot of mid-morning java, I realized why this feeling has been missing and how I can get it back more often. Other than my trip to Minnesota in November right after I resigned from my day job, and one breakfast, business meeting, all I do is sit in my home office and work. That’s not really cutting in, if you know what I mean. What will work, has worked, and will always work is to get out of the house, engage with people, especially people on the same wavelength, change my environment, take a trip with purpose, take a class, go to the library, attend a meeting – whatever – just get out of the house!

It’s kind of like Julia Cameron’sArtist Dates. To be creative you have to change your environment once in a while and engage the world on a different level. I’ve known this for a long time. I don’t know how I could have forgotten it.

But, whatever I call it, I know one thing, I’m getting out of the house more often! A brain is a terrible thing to waste.