I found that our group brainstorming session last weekend was a particularly powerful experience, because it made me realize just how long it has been since I have brainstormed with a group.
In preparation for class I tried to go through Twyla Tharp's questionnaire about our creativity, and I found the experience to be incredibly difficult. My thoughts kept going back to when I was in middle school to a time in my life when I most openly embraced creativity. I was a member of an Odyssey of the Mind Team, (more info about Odyssey of the Mind : http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/default.php) and our team would spend every week brainstorming ideas about various aspects of our project. Because of these weekly brainstorming sessions, I felt truly entrenched in my own creative habit, and I began truly thinking of myself as a creative person, first and foremost.
In the years since then, I have had a hard and harder time getting in that creative space. I am thoroughly out of practice! I find myself raising concerns rather than coming up with ideas. As we worked together on our brainstorming, I had to struggle at first to turn off my internal censors. Although I was able to silence my judgement of our teammates ideas, it was a lot harder to silence the internal judgement. I was able to get about 15 ideas on the board before I felt stuck.
With time I was able to get spurts of creative energy and worked out more and more ideas, slowly feeling more and more confident. It was a very reassuring feeling, after feeling stuck for so long.
