In order to be creative, I think we need time where we just do lots of manual grunt work. Trimming hedges for an hour gets the wiggles out and fills my mind with all sorts of crazy ideas, while curing me of the what-if’s and the anxiety of every-day living in this woe-filled tumultuous economy.

Instead of sitting around lint-gathering and staring at my navel, I’ve been getting stronger by tearing things apart and breaking them down.

It’s like a metaphor for my life, this old house. It looks like a scrap heap. There is festering mold and old worn out materials covering what once was shiny and new.

Tear out all the detritus and you actually have something worthwhile underneath.

Today, for instance, was not the best of days mood wise. So I shut my mind up by chopping up butternut squash, onion, and garlic and boiling them in a pot. I scraped off a bunch of old linoleum with a putty knife, and then attacked some hedges in the backyard with a pruning thingy.

That was sufficient to shut my mind up while clearing it out for creativity at the same time. Thus my theory. Busy-work, mindless activities, are necessary to shut up negative thoughts and make room for growth. Tearing things down and clearing them out does the same for my mind. Some of the best creative thoughts I’ve had have come while washing dishes, cooking, raking, or doing other mundane work that may seem meaningless, but really has its purpose.

As humans, I think we’re meant to do things, or else we rot, like this house. Mold sets in, things fall apart, and we have no idea where to start. We become rooted to our old ideas, hedged in by the overgrowth of negativity and the wreckage of the past.

It’s important, while we have the energy, to clear that stuff out. Instead of sitting around mulling and reading books about it, we can get a spade and dig out the weeds in the yard, soothing our minds in the process. Getting our head churned like mulch so that new ideas can grow.

There is creativity in the mundane.