In my day job, as a researcher, we have found that when children make things with    their hands – especially when they copy designs made with creative materials – it helps their behavior, attention, and achievement.

I have begun to see our human desire to create everywhere.

Cooking, writing, painting

Sewing, singing or songwriting

Gardening and woodworking

Photography

and not least of these, blogging.

As a writer I’ve become more consciously aware that I need to write in order to sort things out. Writing helps me create sense and order out of the noise in my head. This 21st century life is so full of details – emails, news updates, constant status updates and FB posts.

Eckhart Tolle writes about “the noise in your head that pretends to be you and never stops talking.” Though he advises simply pausing, acknowledging the noise without spinning off into an alternate reality, I think of writing as a halfway point. Halfway between the chaos of confusion and the perfect simplicity of silence, is an orderly set of thoughts on paper (or screen).

The quiet that emerges after a good writing session feels like the earth after a good hard rain. The air feels cleaner and lighter. The forest is quiet and can be  seen through the trees.

The canvas is cleared, to begin again, to make room for another noise, another mess, another “sorting out of things.”