Part 2 of 3: New Changes For Simply The Best Creations-”I Refuse To Be a Cookie Cutter!”
Many years ago, when I was in my twenties and I was working in a bank where I was a “teller” or as the banks call them now, “customer service reps”, I had to dress up sharp. In those days there was no such thing as casual day until a couple of years after I started, and girls had to wear pantyhose with every outfit and if a girl wore slacks she had to wear a blazer and a long sleeve one at that. The branch manager (who was a woman) was extremely picky on what her employees looked like.
I was reprimanded one day for wearing a short sleeve blazer, and another co worker got reprimanded for her conservative dress deemed unacceptable because it wasn’t a style the manager liked. There really wasn’t anything wrong with the dress.
One day, as I was working in my comfortable but very pretty long velvet maroon skirt at the bank, (and mind you….I wasn’t a fashion queen by a long shot), something interesting happened. A regular customer came to my window. She was very observant. She said to me, “you know what I like about you? I like the fact you’re not a cookie cutter.” I asked her what she meant by that and she said she liked the fact that I had my own style and didn’t follow what everyone else wore. She admired me for being “different”. Not only did she make my day but she helped me realize that it’s good to be different and not like everyone else (even if at times there is a price to pay), and that to remain true to myself and be who I truly am. Little did I know that this incident would take off to other areas of my life in the future.
As the years went by I started collecting other artist’s pictures and art work and making my own too. I started to slowly come to the realization that I wanted my home to be different and NOT a “cookie cutter”. I didn’t want “Walmart” pictures hanging on my walls, and I wanted my pictures or other artist’s work on my walls that I admired. I wanted everything on my walls to be truly different and original, and definitely something that inspired me.
Fast forward to 2010…when I first started my blog, my intentions were to post art work and inspirations that led to my art along with poems, inspirational stories, etc. As time went on, I noticed that I was using other people’s inspirational stories, and not my own to fill my blog or to draw people to my website. I also noticed that I had a female friend who would copy and paste that same story into her blog. Many of my inspirational stories were typed from a piece of paper that was in my file cabinet in my office which I had collected over the years from all over. I decided to do a Google search to see if these stories were on the internet and indeed some were, and some weren’t. It dawned on me that I was copying someone else’s story and that I had no right to get upset because someone was copying from me. So, I thought about what my favorite blogs wrote about, and guess what? They all had their own thoughts, their stories, their tutorials, etc and they were not copied/pasted from a book or from another website.
I realized that day that I was being a “cookie cutter”, something I did NOT want to be! I wanted to be different, original and I wanted it to be ME most of all.
So, with that said, I decided to no longer post inspirational stories that anyone can find online, or in copying someone’s story in which I did NOT obtain permission from. From now on, when I post an article it will be written by me or by a friend. If I find something that is truly inspirational and that I feel will be beneficial to others, I will obtain permission from the author. There will be no more stories by UNKNOWN AUTHOR or SOURCE UNKNOWN either.
In regards to the beauty recipes I post, these recipes are from all over. Other websites, books, videos, etc. Some of these I obtained permission and some not. I have recently learned that recipes cannot be copyrighted. In posting recipes I will give the source I obtain my information from or I will ask for permission if I can, and if I am approached by an author of the recipe for me to pull it from my website then I will. It is my intention to give full credit to the author and by showing link love to their book or website, etc.
One of my goals is to always inspire people to be creative in their lives. I love to share what others create and I want to show link love as my way of supporting everyone who is artistic or has a special skill or ability. So, I have decided to feature a new artist once a month on the first Saturday of the month; and this I started doing in February of this year.
If you’d like to be featured in my blog and you are an artist please contact me HERE! If you would like to write an inspirational story or a poem and share it on my blog (for free of course!), contact me HERE and leave a detailed message. I will post your website address, your name, a picture of you and any other pictures of art pieces you’d be willing to share on my blog. All I ask is that you share the article or story with your friends versus Twitter or Facebook or by email, etc.
With that said, welcome to my new website and I hope you enjoy the articles, the artwork and that you get to take away some inspiration to be creative in your own life!
Tomorrow I will be announcing some very special news–something artistically new and original for Simply the Best Creations! I’ll let you in on a little secret…….it has to do with another artist and myself! I can’t wait to tell you about it!
Flowers at Fullerton Arboretum, Fullerton, CA (Photo by Ann Lihl)
