I think I've entered a new stage of creative development.
Here are the signs:
I'm beyond excited and eager about projects. I don't just obsess about one. I want to do many different things all at once. Writing, painting, gardening. I want to paint the living room. I want to exercise (and I have been). I want to see the northern lights.
Sadly, during the one break in cloud cover in my area, I didn't see any.
I'm waking up earlier in the morning and going to bed later at night, trying to squeeze in one more hour of work.
I haven't watched anything on the television in a week. I've also been listening to music rather than the radio in the morning.
I want to share my work with everyone. I also want to help other people with theirs. One of my coworkers' homes had been not just burglarized, but vandalized. Twice. She has almost no belongings left, and the house is in tatters. Insurance money has started to come in to replace the water pipes (they stole them for the copper). She asked me for advice about how to cover deep red spray paint. I told her that was the easy part, and got her thinking about paint. There are dozens of free places on the web that will pixelize photos of, for example, her garden, and from there she could create a palette for her walls that would literally bring the colors of her garden inside. Her face lit up … and I had this deep moment of wanting to do more. Help her splash that paint on the walls. Help her move furniture in. Putting that place back together won't heal the hole in her heart where family heirlooms used to live, but turning her new home into her personal work of art … yes. It's not just bandaging good over the bad. It's about creation, about life, about not necessarily rising from the ashes or plodding onward but embracing what is alive and unharmed within and letting that part play and laugh and smile even though there's still grieving to be done.
On a smaller scale, here I was in my content, undamaged corner of the world working busily away when I became inspired. My small world got real big real fast and I feel like I'm growing up into it, trying to fill it and explore it at the same time.
No one really needs inspiration or a muse or whatever to do great creative work. But when it comes … oh yes. I will revel and dance and play, and live as if the inspiration will never go away.