The other day, while sitting at my table in my sunny studio and creating a page in my art journal, I realized one of the unexpected gifts creativity has given me.

It isn't the journal pages themselves.

It isn't the stack of completed notebooks on my shelf or the collage tacked onto my bulletin board for a later project. Although, those are treasured outcomes

It's that creativity has taught me to pay attention. To notice.

Over the years, my creative practice has changed the way I move through the world. It has taught me to look more closely. To linger a little longer. To notice what I might have once hurried past.

How the light hits my studio table at a certain time of day.
The pair of doves whose favorite perch is the pergola in our backyard.
A sentence in a book that seems to arrive at exactly the right moment. (Still sort of freaks me out.)
A memory stirred by a particular scent, like the morning in Paris when I stopped dead in my tracks from the smell of butter in the air.
The first peony opening in the garden.

Small things, perhaps.
Easy to overlook.
And yet, these moments often feel like tiny invitations. Quiet whispers on my heart from life itself.

Pay attention.
Notice.
This matters.
There is something here for you.

When I first began keeping an art journal, I thought the purpose was to create pages. To make something beautiful. To record ideas and memories. And certainly, it has done all of those things.

But somewhere along the way, the practice itself became more important than the pages.

Because showing up to a blank page week after week requires noticing.

You begin collecting scraps of conversation, colors, images, questions, and moments. You start carrying an invisible basket through your days, gathering what catches your eye and touches your heart.

The page asks:
What are you noticing?
What is stirring?
What wants to be remembered?

And slowly, almost without realizing it, you begin living those questions even when you're nowhere near your journal.

You notice the evening sky.
The wildflowers growing between the sidewalk and a rock wall.
The kindness of a stranger.
The longing beneath your own thoughts.

Life becomes less something to rush through and more something to participate in.

While I was in Europe, I found myself photographing patterns that I might replicate in my travel journal: combinations of brick and tile on the outside of a church in Montmartre, the random pattern of cobblestones on a street in Bellagio at Lake Como, rows of terracotta tiles on the rooftops outside my apartment window in Siena. I don’t know which of these will end up in my travel journal, if any, but I noticed the noticing, and that interests me.

I think that's why I keep returning to the page after all these years.
Not because I'm searching for the perfect journal spread.
Not because I need another finished piece of art.
I return because I never quite know what will reveal itself there.

The page has become a place of listening.

A place where I can gather the fragments of a day and discover what they might be trying to tell me.
A place where ordinary moments become visible again.
A place where I remember that life is always speaking.

Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But through glimmers, whispers, patterns, questions, beauty, surprise, and wonder.

The page helps me hear it.

And perhaps that is the greatest gift creativity has given me.

Not the pages or art journals that I've made.

But how I've learned to see my world.

Continue the Practice

If this essay resonated with you, perhaps you'd enjoy Everyday Noticing—a gentle guide filled with simple invitations for paying attention, gathering moments, and documenting the beauty hidden in ordinary days.

Because creativity isn't only about making art.

It's about learning to see.

Inside you'll find:

• Reflection prompts
• Creative invitations
• Ways to collect and remember everyday moments
• Simple practices for living with greater presence and wonder

Art is the language of the journey. Everyday noticing is the practice.

Explore Everyday Noticing