A Time Traveling Ship upon a Sea of Creativity

Set sail through the Silver Door into your Creative Doings Past

In the Secret Storyworld, creative work takes place on a Sea of Creativity. Thus, when you enter the Silver Door of the Time Traveler Hotel you’ll find yourself at the edge of a vast sea.

A ship — your ship — is moored at the dock of a bustling Marketplace. It contains all the creative doings you’ve been busy bringing to the Marketplace in the Year-That-Has-Been.

Or perhaps it is more like my ship, still out to sea, trying to figure out how to navigate into the harbor of the Marketplace so it can unload its treasures.

A Sea of Creative Doings

It is in this room on the Past Floor of the Time Traveler Hotel that we see what we created, and most importantly shared. What did you bring to the Marketplace this past year? What did you ship?

Did you ship inspirations? Knowledge or wisdom? Love and kindness? A business or creative project? Celebrations and community gatherings? Being of service?

How did your life and world creatively change as a result of your creative doings? Is there more of your particular form of creative magic in the world?

Looking into the Ghosts of my own Creative Doings Past I find that I did a lot of creating last year, just like I do every year, but I didn’t do the one thing that brings invisible creations into the Visible World. I like to sail my ship around the Sea of Creativity loading up more and more and MORE treasure, but I don’t actually arrive at the Marketplace very often.

This is a big deal. I now have dozens of half-baked books, hundreds if not thousands of articles, and many guidebooks, handouts, and maps that only I get to see. I’m like a reverse Ebenezer Scrooge, but instead of hoarding the fruits of labor i.e. gold, I hoard the labor itself. Strange.

I still am figuring out how to sail my ship into the Marketplace.

Giving Gifts in the Marketplace

The Silver Door of the Time Traveler Hotel is about sharing our gifts. And oftentimes getting treasure in return. This is the basis of an economy, the trading of gifts for treasure. We give, we get. And while there are all kinds of creative variations that seek to bypass these steps, this trading gifts for treasure is the version that has the most traction in our Visible World.

Creating for creativity’s sake is a perfectly valid way of being in the world. Many save their creativity for their hobbies and leisure hours. At the same time, the Marketplace needs your gifts. This is the creative work that can only be expressed by you. This, alongside your love, is what the world needs now.

Only you can provide it.

Taking an inventory of what you made and what you shared in your creative working life is what this particular Silver Door on the Past Floor of the Time Travel Hotel is all about. And if you’re like me, there is a lot to celebrate, and some adjustments to make.

A Spellbreaking Potion

I feel both encouraged and discouraged as I work on one of my current shippy thing, my Wizard Wednesday. This is a weekly streamlined version of our bigger Wizard School, March’s Story Game.

Each week we practice Wizard Breath and go on Wizard Walks to forage our Wizard supplies. And then we make a potion. The one most helpful for The Past Floor of the Time Travel Hotel is the Spellbreaking Potion.

The potion begins with one cup hot water in which to steep the Wizard herbs of minxmint, nightblooming apple, and flowering wolfbalm.

That means mint, chamomile, and lavender for non-wizards.

Next, you can add fresh lemon juice and lemon zest, or lemon essential oil if you are short on lemons. Lemons work the same for wizards and non-wizards. Lemon is a wonderful cleaner-upper of old tired spells that need breaking.

Brew it up and put it out under the waning moon to add extra spellbreaking power. If you have a spellbreaking emergency you can use it immediately without adding the extra power of the waning moon.

Decant it into a spritzer bottle. Decant is a fancy word for pouring it into your bottle. Use it liberally to break a spell.

Some spells you can use it on:

Negative Thought Spells. Like ‘My work is no good. I am no good.’

Spells cast by that monster horde tasked with keeping you away from the Marketplace. That means Fear. Anger. Jealousy. Shame. Doubt.

It is very helpful to mist down the entire room of your Creative Past to come to completion with the Creative-Year-That-Has-Been.

TIME TRAVELING AT HOME

Open the Silver Door into your Creative Work Past. Inside resides all the creative actions you took to bring your creative ideas into the world.

What did you create? What did you ship to the Marketplace?

Record it in your Postcard from the Past.

Pack anything you want to bring into the Year-That-Will-Be.

Leave the rest behind.