Today I spent working on tasks around the house which occupied my body, but left my mind free to wander. Sometimes this is a creatively productive exercise, but today it was chaos. I would get an idea for a poem, and before I could flesh the idea out my mind would move to a different tangent and I’d think about an idea I could sculpt in clay. It was as if a toddle got ahold of the remote control that modulates my thoughts. The volume was up too loud, and before you could follow the plot of one show the channel is flipped to an infomercial.

Since focusing wasn’t gonna happen tonight I decided to try and paint my thoughts. No plan, just grabbing whatever paint and pens were handy, I just let my mind play with one until it got bored and grabbed something else. It may not look like much, but it feels spot on to what’s rattling around in my brain right now. I hope tomorrow I am a little more focused. I’m doing a lot of freeway driving and this state of mind is where I miss my exits. Maybe it’s a Saturday thing. Last Saturday I was writing a screen play in my head, when I realized I was several miles past my exit.

Are you able to let your mind wander, either intentionally or randomly, in order to generate new ideas for your creative process?