Last week, my hubs and I finally ventured over to the other side of Tampa Bay to visit a new museum. The Bay area has so many wonderful museums and art galleries, and though we’ve both lived in the area for over 30 years, we still have plenty to discover.
Aside from the other treat of meeting up with some great friends we had not seen in a while and experiencing a restaurant new to us (brunch at The Mill in downtown St. Petersburg…scrumptious, I might add!), we headed over to The Florida Holocaust Museum for an exhibit unique for that museum in that in addition to it celebrating the life and work of a child survivor of The Holocaust, it also celebrated one of our favorite things in the world: rock and roll! The exhibit is Bill Graham and the Rock & Roll Revolution, and if you have an opportunity to see it, I highly recommend it! I realize my writing about the museum on what happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day is intriguing though sheer coincidence, but the museum overall is really fascinating. We had a wonderful docent who led a tour through the first level of the museum, Anthony, who did a tremendous job sharing stories of survivors who had visited the museum and been on his past tours. But the Graham exhibit is a real treat.
The successful rock promoter helped put so many fantastic rock bands and singers in the limelight and catapulted them into a spotlight that brought much deserved attention to contemporary music at the time primarily through his venues the Fillmore West and East. From Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Santana and the Grateful Dead to Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers Band, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and so on — his list of clientele is incredible and the events that he or his production staff were involved with or highly instrumental in launching were pivotal to our culture, such as Live Aid and Woodstock, and many more global fundraisers for a variety of social causes. He and his creative team in partnership with talented musicians and performers demonstrated the power that music can have at reaching people and facilitating change and activism.
The exhibit run was supposed to end in February but has now been extended through June 30. Check it out if you happen to be in the area or heck, if you’re anywhere in Florida, make the trip over and combine it with a Rays game and beach time. The Bay area is worth the trip…always!
Okay, I’ll take off my Tampa Bay tourism advocacy hat now and return to the subject at hand — creativity. This is after all a creativity blog.
My message to you as you begin to think weekend is step out of your routine and add creativity into your life in one of the most basic ways – your schedule. A lot of us will stick to the usual pattern. I can tell you that in my house on Saturday mornings, unless we have a special family get-together planned or some other event with friends, we drink our coffee and read the paper, spend time doing various things on our laptops and chat while we listen to music and hang with the dog. Then, a few hours into the afternoon, head out for lunch somewhere, run a few errands (typically, my second least favorite activity in the world – odds and ends shopping), only to wrap up the afternoon with my LEAST favorite activity in the world, GROCERY shopping.
We have a terrific system, though. My hubby is the best at couponing and keeping me smiling while we shop but people tend to bug me in stores — their selfish ways of cutting in lines, being rude in the aisles and just overall being annoying — so I find when I leave most stores, I’m not as happy as when I enter them, as a general rule of thumb. (Lesson here is if you run into me while I’m shopping, don’t hold my demeanor against me — I’m much nicer when I’m not in a store.) But that’s basically our Saturday routine — nothing big or exciting. But predictable and we can plan the rest of our weekend or not plan it, knowing that at the very least THIS is what is going to take place on Saturday during that time.
Routines are great because you get good at them and more efficient the more often you do them. They help you get stuff done. So I’m not criticizing routines or turning to them for much of our life — that’s the only way some of us can operate and ever get anything done.
But the weekends are also a time of freedom — or at least, they should be. If you don’t work on the weekends, that is. Your weekdays are already dictated by your managers, your kids, your household obligations — what days you put out the trash, when you have to pick up the kids at school, when you have to be sitting at your desk at work, etc. So the joy of weekends is this should be YOUR time. And when else can you give yourself a special treat and try something new like a new restaurant, a new museum or a new movie?
If you are a creature of habit or find yourself backing out of plans because it’s oh so comfortable to stay home and do what you always do this weekend, stop for a moment — and think about this blog. Make a promise to yourself to TRY ONE NEW THING this weekend. Even if you go to that restaurant you always go to on Saturday (or Sunday) — why not order something different this weekend? Even if you plan on grocery shopping at the same time on the same day… consider trying a different location or add something new to your menu for at home this week. It will add some spice to your grocery shopping routine, too, shopping for ingredients you don’t normally buy.
Adding creativity to our lives doesn’t mean you have to take a painting class. It means upset the usual, step out of your lane, add a little variety…experience something new.
What new thing, place, dish, activity, art or experience will you discover this weekend? Share before or after. I’d love to hear from you. As always, thanks for reading. ~ Chris K.
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