Butt-crack mural: Rethinking self-judgement

This afternoon I started worrying that I hadn’t had any new bloggable ideas today. OK, the Farmers Market umbrella was an idea, but just barely. What if I didn’t have enough ideas to keep this project going? What if I could only come up with ideas in the course of conversation, and couldn’t line up enough babysitters to go out and converse? What if I never had another idea ever again?

What if, what if…. Once again, this question was plaguing me, except this time it was precipitated by idea sharing rather than idea hoarding. Be careful of what you wish for — or worry about — because an hour after the “what if” anxiety set in, I had an idea.

A deeply terrible idea, but according to the rules of this experiment, once that I’m obligated to blog. Here it is:

A giant vertical mural made up of photographs of people’s butt cracks, exposed from the top of their too-low-cut pants when they bend over. If you took a whole series of those photos you could stack them into one tall vertical continuous butt-crack photo.

I have to admit, I hadn’t considered the possibility that blogging my ideas would expose me as an aesthetically challenged low-grade perv. I had only thought about the moments of inspiration that slowly languish in the recesses of my brain instead of getting their moment in the sun. And frankly, I’m awfully tempted to revise the terms of this little experiment so that I can avoid further humiliation.

But for now, I’m going to stick with my initial terms…and not just because a rule is a rule. I wonder whether all the self-judgement and shame I pile onto the ideas that don’t warrant a blog post or IPO may inhibit the creativity that could lead to something wonderful. So for the next few weeks, I’m going to try to live without that self-judgement. Here’s a song that helps: