INGENUITY

When I set about making INSPIRATO, I enlisted my Facebook friends, asking them to share with me the name of a non-family friend along with one of their qualities.  It seemed a good way to get contributions to the paper link chain that built off the Healing Chain that I made for Mom many years ago, crafted from blessing & healing quotes contributed by her devoted e-mail dist list friends.  


I never ever thought that I'd be one of those named friends!  But someone did - along with ingenuity.   Well, I was as surprised as when Nita long ago gave intrusive as one word that described me to her!!  And it's been just as enlightening.


When Nita used "intrusive" to describe a primary quality she associated with me, others scoffed.  Not me.   I paid close attention.  


What about me struck Nita as intrusive?  It was important, because "intrusive" captured the very sense  that  essential others seemed to feel about me, too.  Far from scoffing, her one word utterly engaged my attention - and investigative powers.  And, in time, a possible "how" behind her  feeling I was intrusive revealed itself.


Well, I was even more gobswoggled when Suzie used ingenuity.  
Utterly unclever me?  
ngenious?  


At first, I scoffed - she must be thinking of someone else.  I never ever saw myself as having the least bit of ingenuity.


Then, Thursday came.  Thursday, when we arrived at the gallery to find the New York poster fallen to the floor.  Between the weather being so beastly humid & the gallery's self-healing wall, and the weight of the large foam core-backed poster, the tape we normally used was a total wash out.  But we couldn't nail anything into the foam core & it could take forever for glue to dry if we attached a hanger that way.  Strip of wire-wrapped foam core, attached to the back with Suze Weinberg's ultra strong crafting tape.  And it worked like a dream!  


Then, Saturday came.  And I looked at how Danielle & Co. had set up a protective ring around the alluring-yet-dangerous pit, using the bee garden stakes & yellow cording I'd picked up - all on deep sale - at A.C. Moore, not wanting to put myself at risk of being sued if someone took a tumble into the ground dimple.  After several Bryn Athyn Bounty's worrying that someone could get hurt, I'd come up with a solution - remember the bee stake I'd gotten for Adrian & Ryan - and knew, because of John working there, that they were on sale.  No big whoop, to me - just looking out for my own interests, as having it "protected" would help protect all of the vendors if someone did take a nasty tumble.  But I never ever thought of spotting the potential problem & coming up with a low cost, whimsical-looking solution as ingenuity.   Just seemed like good old-fashioned common sense.  


"Hey, I am blessed with ingenuity!"  What a total DUH! that I never ever realized it before.  It was ingenuity that made me won me praise & "Employee of the Year" honors in the corporate world, whether coming up with Brand Voice Bulletin or finding fast, effective ways to solve a human resources manager's big problem or getting a difficult Medical Director to approve out-of-network care for a baby in danger of losing his eyesight.  Earlier this year, it was making an off-hand comment in an e-mail to a potential key contact that John's an artist.   This summer, it's how offering "decorate your own" cupcakes & making Mango Mango ice pops during mega hot weather hit me as ways to help engage younger Bounty customers while increasing my sales!  What seem like no-brainers to me might strike others as ingenuity.  Go figure! 


It's going to be fun, thinking back on all the things I thought of as just practical, looking at them through the eyes of , "Was that obvious or ingenious?"  


Amazing, what I've learned, thanks to our art show.  Serendipity, indeed!!