It seems I’ve lost track of the purpose of my Creativity Journal recently. I’ve blogged about all kinds of things in recent posts, but not much about creativity.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been creative, though. My band, Steel River Three has continued to play occasionally, and we have two gigs coming up next week. I’ve written a new song (with the valuable feedback assistance of Lannette Robinson, John Jesitus, and the members of Melanie Tem’s writing group) called “New Guy Smell”, and we’re hoping to debut that at the next show. I’ve also been working on editing down raw video footage to produce a demo DVD of the band’s performance at Pink E’s in Westminster. (Video editing on a shoestring budget is much more difficult than I originally anticipated, and it takes forever.) When that project is done, I can extract the audio and create a live demo CD, as well, perhaps with a couple of studio tracks thrown in for good measure. All the big bands do that to get you to buy their live records, you know.

I’ve also done a lot of work for Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem, revising their existing website. The new site is not up yet, pending final approval from the Tems, but it should be available for public consumption soon. I’ve received verbal confirmation from the editor of ComputorEdge magazine that I will be assigned “a few” articles before the end of the year, and that’s great news.

My crowning creative achievement lately has been poetic, though. Early last month, I presented Lannette with a silver skeleton key, a silver-topped leather ring box from Scotland, and an engagement ring. I handed these to her as I read a proposal sonnet (which I had written, of course) at Lily Lake, near Estes Park, Colorado. We will be married on that spot on August 1, 2005, and have our reception at the Baldpate Inn right across the highway from the lake. (That link also has a couple of pictures of Lily Lake and the surrounding area.) The significance of the skeleton key is that Earl Derr Biggers‘ first novel was called Seven Keys to Baldpate, and the Baldpate Inn in Estes Park was officially endorsed by Biggers in the first half of the last century as being virtually identical to the fictional inn he had described in his 1913 novel. Lannette purchased a copy of that novel for me on eBay, and keys have been a theme of the relationship ever since.

Lannette has put up a wedding page at Geocities if you’re interested. It includes pictures of the site, the rings, and a copy of the sonnet.

So you see, I really have been creative and productive. I just haven’t been recording it. I have future plans for this site, though. Using some of the research I did while working on Melanie and Steve’s website, I plan to add some blog management features to this one, which will make it much easier for me to edit and/or delete these Creativity Journal entries. I will also put a “teaser” paragraph on the opening page of the site, so people can have a taste of what the latest journal entry is about.

When I get time, I will add the proposal sonnet to the Original Poetry page, as well as the lyrics (and maybe even an MP3) for “New Guy Smell.”