Successful Creativity

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”

Arthur Ashe

Anyone who maintains a blog is creative. I think it’s the nature of the beast.
Titanium, who does her Element 22 blog with lots of originality, was acknowledged recently with the Kreativ Blogger award, something her wit and imagination well deserve. She passed it on to me.
The deal with this kind of award is that you explain who gave it to you and provide a link. Then you reveal seven factoids about yourself, and you pass it on to someone else. And somewhere on the post you insert this award:

I think I’ve told everything there is to know about me. But let me peel some layers off the onion and see what there is to find.


1. My first job was in a rock and mineral shop when I was 12. My dad got it for me because I loved rocks. I earned 25 cents an hour cleaning and helping rearrange the wares. Bonuses: The owner gave me rock and mineral specimens for my collection, plus I got free lunch at the next-door Tastee Freeze. I still have my rock collection.

2. My first car, presented to me the Christmas I was 16 by my dad, was a 1960 Studebaker Lark convertible. It looked like a black bomb to me and I despised it, because it was 1971 and the car wasn’t a classic yet. Dad paid my uncle $50 for it. I drove it for a year before cracking the radiator and getting a VW Bug afterward. My dad told me to be sure I always kept the radiator full on the Bug. I was paranoid until I found out it had an air-cooled engine and Dad was pulling my leg.

3. I trained as a florist in high school, then chose my university to study horticulture with the notion of a career as a floral designer. After one semester of plant identification, that idea went south, and my English professor talked me into switching majors. I kept up my work in floral design, and now I compete as an amateur in our regional fair. I won a Best of Show for my work last year.

4. I won a crossbow-shooting contest in the Swiss Alps while loaded to the gills on vodka. It was the first time I had ever handled a crossbow. It must have been the liquor.

5. I met my husband in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 1990. Friends played matchmaker between me, a high-falutin’ magazine editor, and Joe, a truck driver with tattoos. I fell in love with him on our first date, when he described someone as looking like a “beachball with arms.” We’ve been inseparable ever since.

6. In the earthquake we had here in 2004, my town lost a few 1880-era brick buildings. I brought home some of the bricks and made this miniature piazza, in the shape of an iron cross with limestone accents. It serves no useful purpose, but I like knowing the bricks were handmade 130 years ago down by the river, and that I have preserved them from the garbage dump.

7. I love my Canon digital camera. These days I enjoy shooting with the macro setting. I cruise around the yard often, looking for possibilities. No one else gets to see the shots except me and sometimes you. That suits me fine. As Arthur Ashe said, the doing is more important than the outcome.

Now to pass on the award. I bestow it upon two blogs I discovered during my Haiti Challenge early this month. Please go visit them:

Patti at Pattinase looks at writing, books, movies, politics, life and music in creative ways. She covers forgotten books, old TV shows, political or corporate faux pas, old crime thrillers, what’s funny and what’s not. She’s fresh and interesting.

Rene at Not the Rockefellers promises to share the “view from the cheap seats” and she delivers with a wry sense of humor. I like her poetry too.

And do You think success is a journey, or a destination?