LIVING CREATIVELY
Living creatively isn’t just about making art—it’s about making life artful! It means moving through your days with curiosity, intention, and a playful willingness to explore. It’s choosing to see the world through your own one-of-a-kind lens, taking the occasional brave leap, and keeping your sense of wonder fully switched on. When you live this way, even the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Creativity becomes less of a hobby and more of a way of being.
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
- Oscar Wilde
About Kim |
Creative Designer & Lifelong Learner
Kim is the creative designer of this site. She is a Deaf artist and artivist, a Certified Zentangle® Teacher, and a lifelong learner. Kim expresses her creativity across a wide range of mediums, including visual art, graphic design, and web design. She earned both her Master of Science in Adult, Occupational and Continuing Education and her Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Studies from Kansas State University.
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Over the course of more than 20 years, Kim worked in the Vocational Rehabilitation and Mental Health fields before retiring from those professions. She currently serves as a Lecturer at the University of Kansas–Edwards Campus, teaching the popular course Introduction to Deaf Studies, which has a maximum enrollment of 75 students and a waiting list every semester.
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Kim has been a hobbyist, artist, artivist, and designer for many years. Her favorite color is the rainbow. When she was about seven years old, she received a beautiful rainbow-spectrum set of approximately 60 vibrant markers as a Christmas gift. Seeing those richly colored markers displayed together left a lasting impression on her young, visually attuned mind and ignited a lifelong passion and learning for creativity.
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what is creativity?
Creativity is the ability to generate new ideas and new connections between ideas, and ways to solve problems in any field or realm of our lives. Many of us think of creativity as making something new—like a new song, poem, painting, or novel. Creativity is certainly involved in making art. However, creativity is much more than that. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to work or solve problems in our daily lives. All people have the capacity to be creative. We can also nurture and increase our creativity.
There’s a link between ccreativity and positive emotions and, ultimately, happiness. Researchers have found that people are more likely to have a creativity breakthrough if they were happy the day before. creativity is less likely to be present with negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, and anxiety; it is positively associated with positive emotions such as joy, love, and curiosity.
Positive emotions and creativity make us feel interested in the world around us. The ability to be fascinated and allow ourselves to explore and discover makes us feel open and alive. It’s also what draws us to learn new skills, perspectives, and ideas—resources that we can draw on to solve life’s problems. This boosts our resilience and our satisfaction with life—both part of the equation for overall happiness.
Sources: Positivity, by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph. D.; The 6 Myths of Creativity, Fast Company Psychology Today
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In a nutshell, creativity and flow are linked to better job satisfaction, higher-quality leisure time, more positive emotions, and greater overall well-being and happiness. The good news is, everyone is creative—and everyone can nurture their creative side.
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