Frozen Squash and Creativity

This evening, as I stood over the stove stirring the butternut squash that I froze two months ago, I watched as the frozen block come back to life (albeit in a more mushy state than it had previously been). The slow rhythm of stirring, waiting to see the new form my squash would take, then stirring some more, sparked a thought: I am grateful that I have been freezing the leftover vegetables from our CSA box. While this thought wasn't a stunning revelation, it was a tiny idea that lead to another tiny idea. It occurred to me that having this frozen block of squash (instead of throwing these bits away) allowed me to have an expanded menu of ingredients to chose from tonight. And this was all because I made a random decision to chop-up an on-the-brink-of-spoiling squash and then stashed it in the freezer.

That minor wondering while preparing dinner, smelling the sweetness of the squash finally breaking through, landed me in a familiar place: ruminating on creativity. Storing vegetables for future recipes is surprisingly similar to noting daily experiences that may be useful in the creation of future projects. Ideas, references, impressions. Collecting and storing these bits provides the starting ingredient for works of creativity. I often forget that that's how this process works. Doing this type of work is not magical, per se, it requires being a skilled collector of daily experiences. Then, when the time is right, selecting a few fragmented ideas to combine into a new form. That isn't to say there is no magic, of course there is. But I think it comes from knowing how to combine those fragments into something new.