In this cartoon, two women are at a fast food restaurant, One says, “Level with me, Doris. Are you my real or virtual friend.”
I know. Social media is giving me a headache too. I use it for business, yet sometimes, all the tweets and posts get me down too. We know all of us, including me, share only the highlight reel. We aren’t going to talk about the mundane, the mild frustrations and the lost car keys.
I am glad I can keep in touch with family and friends through social media. But at the end of the day, it is the real, face to face encounters that strengthen real friendships.
I loved the tin pan illustration Pastor Southards shared at the end. His grandfather loved to garden. When Steve visited, he would see aluminum foil pie pans hung over the garden. His grandfather put them there to scare away the birds, deer and other animals that wanted the tasty fruits and vegetables. Steve observed if a bird was smart, he might look for the foil pans because that would signify something good was nearby.
Too often, what scares us could actually hide the blessing we desire the most. Great sermon, as always from Pastor Southards.
If you listen to the news media for very long, you get the feeling everything is falling apart and everyone is ready to strangle each other. It can leave you with a feeling of fear and despair. You get the impression apocalypse has already come and the only thing left to do is write off the world and call it a day.
But if you unplug, take a drive across the country, and get out into nature, you get an entirely different feeling. The forests are unaffected by news hype. Mountains and valleys care little about the elections and the latest violence to hit the streets. True, what mankind does to nature affects it. But the story mankind tells itself is much scarier than the reality of a quiet trail, or a babbling brook. Just don’t take in some media before you leave. You’ll probably see a story about a man-eating cougar, a rabid bear or a bigfoot sighting.
The news media itself is suffering from downsizing and cutthroat competition. Perhaps the media loves to scare us because the typical news reporter is scared he or she will lose their job next week. Perhaps when you focus on the worse of humanity, you begin to believe your own hype.
It is so much easier to focus on the worst of humanity. It is so much more difficult, but rewarding to balance it with the good of nature as well as the best of humanity. It is out there. You just have to be intentional and escape the 24 hour news cycle once in a while.
This is a page out of my sketch journal. This week’s word for Illustration Friday was “suspense.”
When I heard today’s theme for Illustration Friday was “suspense,” I decided I would take a page directly from my sketchbook. The word reminded me of old radio drama shows and comic books. It reminds me of a little grime and notes taken on napkins. Something seedy is going on when there’s some suspense!
Cartoon of a man in a fetal position. He says to another, "I'm okay. This is just how I get creative."
In high school, I had a graphic design teacher that loved to spout adages. One of his favorites was, “limitation is the basis for all creativity.”
I’d love to know whether he made that up or if he got that quote from someone. I googled the phrase and nothing came up. There were a few lines that began with “limitation is the basis of…” but then it went into something altogether different.
At the time, I thought he was talking about the limits of design technology. Back then, a personal computer was a novelty. Anything you created had to be for the limits of the printing presses or silkscreen printing. High tech was anything that could be done in a dark room with film or Photostat paper.
Thirty years later, the phrase still rings true to me. When you are limited with your resources, you learn to use your creativity. If all you have is a paper bag, you can learn to make the most use of it.
Sometimes, I get stuck on what tools I have at my disposal. I think I can’t be creative unless I have the latest hardware or software upgrades. I must remind myself that if I face a limit, it’s a golden opportunity to use my creativity.
Have you ever faced a limitation that ended up giving you a creative boost? Feel free to post it in the comments.
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In this cartoon, two women are at a fast food restaurant, One says, “Level with me, Doris. Are you my real or virtual friend.”
