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A prompt to encourage your practice of creativity this week from Riversider and local author Larry Burns.
Do you need a low stress way to include seven minutes of creative contemplation into your week? Consider this your helpful nudge towards a slightly more creative life. If it helps, come back every week for a quick hit of creative contemplation. Each week I’ll share a new nudge. It will include a Thing (T), a Place (P), and a Sense(S) for your focus, a TPS creative nudge.
Last week, we hit the gas pedal to test our creative mettle. I’ve always found I do better with brainstorming and other creative thinking when I’m in motion. What did a few laps around the creative track do for your critical thinking and creativity this week? Maybe you’re like me and recalled a harrowing flat tire fix alongside a busy highway. During your journey, did anyone point out to you the difference between wheels and tires? It happened to me. Even if you just photographed a few tires that escaped their cars to live along the roadside full-time, I hope your quest for tires brought you to a creative destination.
I don’t know about you, but I got tired of all the tire puns rolling around in my head from last week’s focus. I’ll be sure to tread lightly on the puns with this week’s creative nudge: mirrors. It would be too easy to call this a reflective exercise! Instead, let’s go beneath the surface of mirrors to find the qualities that best encourage creative play.
Mirrors are useful tools for self-reflection, instruments of light and illusion, and powerful symbols found in literature and art. Mirrors invite us to see ourselves and the world from new perspectives, challenging us to look at what is revealed or hidden with a little light and our active imaginations. This week, let’s explore the creative potential of mirrors (or any reflective surface), using our sense of sight to invite our inner artist to come out and play:
As we engage with mirrors this week, let’s appreciate their ability to reflect and transform our perceptions. Mirrors remind us to look beyond the surface and to consider the deeper truths and possibilities that lie within and around us. By incorporating mirrors into our creative practices, we can explore new dimensions of self-awareness and artistic expression.
Feel free to share your mirror-inspired creations on social media and tag me @larrymarkburns or this paper, @theraincrossgazette. We’d love to see your creative ideas come to life. Your contributions not only enrich our collective creative journey but also inspire others to see the potential in everyday objects.
Together, let’s continue to explore the reflective adventures of our imaginative minds and the creative connections we build along the way. Here’s to the mirrors, helping us see ourselves and the world with greater creative clarity.
This column written with the help of a customized GPT from OpenAI. If I can make one, so can you!
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