I’ve been thinking more about the right brain/creative energies topic I wrote about last week, digging a bit deeper that I had before. I’m realizing there’s more to keeping those energies flowing than just “meditate more.” Or maybe there’s less to it? As I said before, the key is to keep the brain exercised and working. But there’s a lot of different ways to do so, above and beyond just meditation.
The big one, of course, is to always be doing something creative every day. Not feeling musical? Write something. Not feeling literary? Draw something. Not feeling artistic? Find something else creative to do. They all pull from the same pool, so they all exercise similar mental muscles. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece every time, it’s okay to just mess around and throw it all out when your done.
I’ve been endeavoring to do this myself the last week or two. Musically, I’ve vowed to try and not start anything new until I clear the backlog of unfinished ideas that have piled up over the years. Finish it, or delete it. So I’m working my way forward through all of it and clearing the shelves, so to speak. Some days I just noodle around and nothing comes of it, other days I make really good progress. I’ve got two songs almost completed now, songs that have been sitting on my hard drive for 3-4 years.
Another big right brain activity is to get out and do new things, go new places, try new things. This one is sitting at the front of my mind right now as I reflect back on a three day holiday weekend and feel like I wasted it. I left the apartment all of once all weekend, and that was for a standing family lunch that I do every weekend regardless. There were so many other things I could have done, places I could have went. Endless possibilities, and instead I stayed home and watched a Deadliest Catch marathon all weekend.
I started doing this a bit the last time I got my right brain in shape, and I very much want to do so again this time. Though, I’m not 100% sure what to do this time. I’ve got the three big trips planned I wrote about last week, and those have got all my vacation time and a good bit of my discretionary income tied up for the next year or so. Which means I’m going to have to seek out short day trips when it comes to going new places. As far as doing new things, I’m not sure what to do there. Last time around, I started dating again much more heavily. Got to meet a lot of interesting new people, go new places, do new things. But right now I’m not really feeling that, I’m mostly feeling burned out on that whole process.
Ah well, I’ll come up with something. Brain storming about ideas is probably an entire post unto itself, so I’ll save it for another day. I’ll save the rest of my thoughts on this topic for another day as well. Don’t want to burn through the few topics I feel like writing about right now too fast, do I?