To Move Forward Creatively Change the Blade

How to do you move forward after a long summer break of silence? That’s what I’m asking myself today.

Sometimes when you’re cutting a lot of paper you just want to get through the pile and finish. You try to hurry up and push harder, but that just derails you. Your fingers cramp up and you’re creating a mess on the table. Brute force doesn’t help you any you’re not at all moving faster, no mater how much you try.

You can see how to you want to move forward, but you don’t seam to get there…

To finish quicker (so that you can move on to the more interesting part of the project) you should actually take a step back. Consider that this is the time to take a break and change the blade in your x-acto knife. The constant motion dulls the blade, and a dull blade will make paper pulp rather than the crisp cuts you want to achieve. Any book binder or scrap book crafter knows this,  but sometimes we’re so “into” what we’re doing that stopping, taking a step back, and reflecting on what you really need, feels like an impossibility!

I think that sometimes you gotta push on, but other times it’s better to stop and think about what you really need in your life in order to move forward. Right? Reflection is key, taking a break means time to think and plan what’s next.

The spare blade for your craft knife is just a metaphor for taking a break and reflecting on what your next move should be, in what ever creative area you’re having a stand still in.

What do you really need to move forward?

The past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking up titles for at least a hundred blog posts that I want to write, and I have lots of ideas and things I want to continue to share and do with this blog simmering inside my brain. I think summer has been a time for taking a break and reflecting on what I need to push on, and as this is already the beginning of August I simply feel that I want to get back to blogging. I’ve found a pack of spare blades, and I feel sharper than ever…

When you want to Move Forward…

Non of the glorious blog posts I thought up and listed to write today were this one, To Move Forward Creatively Change the Blade, but now that I have been pondering it for a while, I think that it’s quite a good blog title.

Remember that all of us who wants to contiguously do creative work, need to have the right tools, and one of the tools might be reflection and stepping back. I think blogging is that step for me, it’s my time to reflect back and my way to move forward. When I don’t write my brain slows down and does not seam very sharp at all. I’m sharpening my pencils as we speak.

Also, when your tool is no longer working for you, get a new one or simply put, renew it in what ever way you need it to make it work. If you want to move forward find what moves you. For me it’s blogging. For you, it might be something else? Maybe reading this will remind you to move forward in some way, with  your own creative plan?

Just don’t ever forget: change the blade when it’s dull. And take care of your fingers.