I’ve believe that in order to live the kind of life we desire, we must choose to create it. It’s a concept that sounds good 
on paper, yet making it happen can be harder. We humans tend to look at things from a lens of the big picture concept side and though they say that the devil is in the details, we rush past the smallest of details.
We look for big signs that we are succeeding and hope that huge leaps will result fast and life changing results.
The truth is that if we want our creative lives to be sustainable, we need to learn to subsist on tiny sips of inspiration and see the infinitesimal moments of beauty and perfection as our building blocks.
What will save us, therefore, isn’t grand gestures or sweeping changes, but the small moments.
A perfect cup of coffee, a still fresh ten day old bouquet of grocery store flowers, the way the flame on a candle flickers as it reaches the end of the wick.
It’s time for the 100 Day Project. 100 Days of Making. Today is the day to proclaim the intention of your project (though you can hop in anytime).
Last year, I set up a goal of 100 days of fiction for my 100 days project. I stopped at day 30. Over time, I lost the romance of it due to a case of comparisionitis.
Photographing words in a notebook, even when I changed up where I laid the notebook, felt lackluster. Especially for a visual project. I wanted to play along this year again. To challenge myself. To play within my own craft as a writer and find a way to share it in a more visually pleasing way.
This morning, I walked outside to place a Netflix video in the mailbox. My phone was in my pocket and a cup of 
coffee in my hand. I paused to watch the changing sky as the rising sun colored my view with tinges of pink and shots of gold against midnight blue sky. Then I gazed to my left where my Queen of the Night tulips are finally blooming as my (RED) begin to fall apart. Such stark beauty was all around me, and if I had hurried just a little, I would have missed it.
We tend to believe that when we talk about “making”, it must be something done with from a high art perspective: writing, drawing, making music, etc.
Yet, my core truth is that we are always making. Each moment of living is a choice in creative living. We just have to notice them.
It’s noticing the way the raw sugar settles into the bottom of my cup, watching it disappear as I add coffee, and then observing the bloom of dairy goodness as I splash in some milk.
It’s watching John load the car in the mornings and being reminded how much I love and adore him.
First goes his lunch box on the passenger seat, his briefcase on the 
floorboard, his coffee cup in the cup holder. Then, moving the lunchbox to the floorboard and wedging it between his briefcase and console so his cup of orange juice won’t spill. He leans over and puts the keys in the ignition then shuts the passenger door. He always looks up at me standing in the doorway at this point, smiles and waves goodbye. He opens the back passenger door to lay his suit coat on the back seat so it doesn’t wrinkle. Once everything is in place, he walks around to the driver’s side and gets in the car. He buckles up, hits the hazard lights and adjusts his music. He carefully backs out of the garage and once the car has hit the driveway completely, he hits the closure on the door.
But the moments that make up my day continue.
It’s the smile I get from the butcher as he packages up a pound of ground chicken and a pound of ground sirloin for me to try a new meatloaf recipe. It’s the lame yet funny joke the cashier shares with me.
It’s the quick kiss I get as John walks in the door and the scent of him against hours old starched shirt, faded Old Spice, and the workday. It’s gazing in the mirror and seeing my own inner light as I fasten a necklace. It’s the laughter shared as we watch the golfers go by in the evening. It’s the shift in light as the day is swallowed up by night.
So, for the next 100 days, I am going to notice my own life. To see the tiny moments that create my existence. To lovingly describe the moment, using my preferred craft of writing.To honor the way creative living plays into my everyday life.
For this is what the core of making is to me: making a life.
You can find me over on Instagram using the hashtag: #100daysofcreativeliving
