Strike While the Mood is Hot*

Honestly, I'm not as tidy as I wish I were. In fact, my initials already spelling M.E.S. is a bit of an omen for how neat I keep things half the time. But every once in a while I actually act upon my desire to have a neater, more organized house, and recently, the creative mood crossed paths with the tidy mood and gave birth to this:

Now, don't get me wrong: it really is just a tube of fabric with ribbons at each end to hold my abundance of plastic bags that my roommate and I seem incapable of throwing away, but this plain little tube is something that we have needed for months. I have been putting off making it, whether from perfectionism, or lack of time, or lack of motivation, or just from the fact that the laundry room door stays closed most of the time, so why should I be concerned that one shelf looks like this:

What you can't see in the above picture is that there was also a pile of bags in the floor and another pile that had fallen on top of the washer. Like I said, we may have a bag problem. 

But I rolled up my sleeves, donned my 1950's housewife kerchief, and went to work, allowing myself to let go of the idea that a tube to hold my trash bags had to somehow be a work of art that I spent hours on. 

And in less than an hour, including the stops I made for music, brownies, hunting for fabric, pulling out my sewing machine and waiting for the iron to heat up, I had successfully turned this: 

Into something useful. 

That's important to me. I followed my creative spirit, rather than letting myself get hampered by the idea of imperfection. 

Which means I'm keeping better track of my New Years Resolutions than I might have thought. 

So, strike while the mood is hot - let your creativity flow into something useful or beautiful or simply fun - and don't let fear hold you back. 

*This statement does not apply to pretty much any emotions of passion, including rage, malice and lust.