Last night when I got home from painting at 10:30, my dad asked me, “Do you want to go WORK OUT?” Well, the television was on, and–silly me–I thought he was asking about my evening and heard, “Are you WORN OUT?” So I said, “Yes.” (Because I felt like crap.) Then he asked if I still needed to blog (the answer was yes again), which I thought he asked because he was going to suggest that I go to be early. But no, he was (I found out later) trying to figure out when we’d be leaving for the gym. Y’all, I blogged until 1:00 in the morning, and the whole time my dad was patiently waiting for me on the couch. When I finished he said, “Ready to go to the gym?”

“The gym?” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

So thirty minutes ago my dad dragged my mother into the laundry room where I was working on arts and crafts and said, “Okay, I have a witness. Do–you–want–to–go–work–out–tonight?”

“Yes, I actually would like to WORK OUT tonight,” I said. “But I have to blog first.”

So here I am, blogging.

For the last two and a half weeks I’ve been fighting a sinus infection, but–thankfully–have felt better today. (Fingers crossed this trend continues.) This afternoon I had lunch with a friend. Then I went thrift shopping but didn’t buy anything (way to go, Marcus). Then this evening I did some odd jobs for a client. Then–when I came home and Dad told me my driver’s side headlight was out–I put a new bulb in my car. Then I combed through picture frames and old book covers and matched them to some brooches I recently acquired. I can’t tell you how fun this is for me. Whenever the creative mood strikes, seriously, time and my worries fly away. Magically, I’m transported to a better place.

Along the lines of creativity, this evening in an old book I recently bought (for the cover) I ran across an article about creativity and genius by the artist Frederic Whitaker. In it he compares and contrasts insanity to genius and says, “Insanity is imagination without control. Genius is imagination under control–plus the divine spark that we call driving force.” I absolutely adore these definitions, especially considering that we all too often MISUSE our imagination. For example, both me and my dad each IMAGINED a certain conversation about our going to work out (or my being worn out) last night, neither of which was TRUE. Likewise, don’t we all IMAGINE the thoughts, behaviors, and judgments of others on a daily basis (and aren’t those imaginations often negative and, therefore, pain-inducing)?

Isn’t this too imagination without control (that is, insanity)?

More and more I believe that imagination, creativity, and genius were meant for arts and crafts projects, home building and decorating, landscaping, dancing, playing musical instruments, and SOLVING problems, not INVENTING them. Because isn’t that what’s happening when we presume to know what someone else is thinking, feeling, or doing–creating problems out of thin air? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve lost sleep believing someone was mad at me or–worse–intentionally trying to screw up my life when–I found out later–they weren’t. Like, at all. This is where misdirected imagination leads you–into the land of insomnia, anxiety, stress, and depression.

Properly directed imagination, however, leads you out of it.