Attempts at being creative

I like to consider myself to be a creative person.  When I was in 6th grade, we had a Medieval Festival where all the sixth graders drew out various roles (queen, king, jester, etc.) and I got to be a nun.  Although I don't have any photographs of this momentous occasion in my creative life, I can only assume it looked something like this:

At any rate, one of our assignments for the festival was to create a diary entry from the perspective of our character. I proudly stood in front of my sixth grade class beaming over my creative prowess as I read the diary entry that I created.  I don't remember the details but I'm pretty sure I joined the nunnery as refuge from my abusive father who used to lock me in closets (impressive, right?).

Lately, those creative juices have been seriously depleted.  In order to ameliorate the situation I have resorted to googling "creativity slump", there are some real gems in this google search but mostly I've just learned that I'm a lazy, procrastinating, perfectionist.  I've also found that I need to be inspired by others to be creative which leads to over-researching and in turn to a realisation of my ineptitude to create something unique.

Today, I've decided to overcome my slump by creating something, and found myself extremely motivated by the Typo shop on Queen Street which is full of creative awesomeness.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes, for now enjoy some stealth photographs of the awesomeness I spotted in Typo.

Cat salt and pepper shakers, at first they were cute and then they were creepy.

Cute owls

On Hobbits and running

On hobbits

I have been thinking an awful lot about Hobbits lately.  Firstly, because I am hobbit-sized and still haven't recovered from my love of the shire.  Secondly, because I am very excited for the movie to come out in December.

Please enjoy yet more photographs of the accountant and I in front of Bilbo Baggins's house. I can only assume we were seconds away from Bilbo meeting Gandalf at the door when these photographs were taken.

On running
The other day I ran the farthest I have ever run, 14 miles.  This is pretty awesome until you realise that I have signed up for a marathon and have to add 12 more miles to that.  At any rate, as I was running, I thought of Samwise Gamgee and how he said, "If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been."  In reality, I can't really get much further from home than New Zealand, but sometimes I feel like tackling this marathon is a bit like trying to get a ring of power to Mt Doom.  There are no nazgul or orcs in training for a marathon but there are rainstorms, cars that don't yield to runners, and the unfortunate realisation that you need to pee when you have 8 more miles to go.

Running is hard. Really hard. Most days I ask myself why the hell I keep going after this ridiculous goal.  I guess I just remember that not too long ago I couldn't run around the block without getting winded and now I'm running a half marathon regularly as part of training.  

Moral of the story: