Ishful Thinking

I love to look at books in the children's section of the bookstore. 

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That probably sounds weird since I haven't been a child for a while and I'm not a mom.  I just love them!  I guess that's what happens when you spend so much time reading to kids.  I have this dream in the back of my mind that I'll write a children's book of my own one day.  It's weird because a few people have mentioned that to me recently and I've never told anyone that before.  Unfortunately I don't have my big idea and I really, really, really need to work on my drawing skills.  :-)

Well, I've been a little frustrated creatively lately so last week after church I decided to go to the bookstore and wander around for a while (one of my favorite things to do).  I wandered around all of my regular sections of the store and then decided to go over to the kids section for just a minute.  If all else fails I can always find a book that brings back good memories and leave the bookstore feeling better.

This time I found a book I had never read before.  It's called Ish and it was written by Peter H. Reynolds.  It's about a boy who loves to draw.  He draws everything he sees.  One day when he was drawing a vase of flowers his brother told him that it looked nothing like the vase of flowers he was drawing.  So the boy crumpled up his picture.  From then on everytime he drew a picture it wasn't good enough and he crumpled it up.

One day he was drawing a picture and crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.  His sister picked it up off the floor and he chased her to her room.  He found that she had uncrumpled all of his pictures and they were hanging on the wall.  She said she called them his "ish" pictures.  They were vase-ish, tree-ish...

From then on the little boy loved to draw his ish drawings.  He drew everything he could find and loved every ishful picture he made. 

And he lived ishfully ever after.

I thought this was such a great story!  What a great message!  I felt very inspired after I read it.  The purpose of my blog is to try new things creatively and even if they don't come out great it will be a lesson learned.  The more I try new things the better I will get.  Sometimes the perfectionist in me comes out and steals all of the enjoyment in a project so this book was a perfect reminder for me that it doesn't have to be perfect. 

I own this book now so anytime I start to get frustrated with a project I'll remember what it's like to just enjoy what I'm doing and embrace every marci-ish imperfection.  :-)

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