At the beginning of the year, I dove into The Daily Create, part of ds106. Then, real life intervened: the semester started at the two universities where I teach, the to do list for my day job got longer, and, this week, the spring gardening season took off as we started working on the greenhouse and planting beets and carrots. The 15 to 20 minutes required to take a picture, record a sound or create a video suddenly seemed more difficult to find. I saw today’s assignment to record a sound of something that comforts or makes you feel safe, and I knew exactly what I would do. But as the afternoon got crowded, it was tempting to skip it again.

Since I was going to make my afternoon latte anyway, I decided it wouldn’t be that much harder to record the sound and do some quick processing. Garageband gave me a little trouble but I was able to get it done and posted.

Is it creative? Is it art? It answers the prompt: my afternoon latte is part of my daily ritual. It means a break from the work day for a cup of coffee and a few pages of whatever book I am reading. I curl up in the window seat upstairs, read and watch the sun set. And the act of recording it gave me a break from the daily work as well.

I can’t help but think about the classrooms across the country where the work–often defined as preparing for the test–takes away from the opportunity to create, even something as simple as recording every day sounds. And as budgets get tight, the creative arts are the first things to go.

So, here’s my ode to creativity and my pledge to continue to find that time for creativity as much as possible: