Music To Be Creative By

This summer is flying by and while I'm not betting a chance to be as creative around the house as I'd like - I'm being creative in different ways. One of which has been teaching my stubborn daughter how to swim. That is taking A LOT of creativity.

I'm no stranger to teaching swimming, in addition to swimming in high school, I was a life guard and taught swimming in college as a red cross certified water safety instructor. We've tried everything with Bug, mommy & me lessons, group lessons, I tried teaching her when she was 4, then private lessons and now, I'm back at it. And thankfully - we're finally making progress.

My theory to swimming is that once you can float, you can swim. And finally, Bug can float on her back and even swim a bit. Now we're getting her through her fear of being under water and with her face in the water.

If there is interest, I can post a little about what we've been doing...

But that isn't the point of this post, I'm sorry. I've gotten way off topic.

Each month, I work on a freelance design project. A 16-20 page newsletter for a non profit. And one of the things that really keeps me in a creative groove has always been music.

My favorite way to listen to music for the past 2 years has been on Pandora.

If you're not familiar with Pandora - sign up for an account, you won't be disappointed. You pick what kind of music you want to listen to, either by artist, song, or genre and then Pandora plays that music and music similar to it.

For example, tonight, I'm in the mood for Rusted Root, so I pick that band as my station on Pandora, from there Pandora begins selecting music similar to Rusted Root and now I'm working while listening to Rusted Root, Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Ben Harper and others with similar qualities.

If I don't like a song, I click the thumbs down and it helps them feed me only the music I like. If I'm not in the mood for a song but still like it, I can skip it, tell them not to play it for a month or tell them to move that to one of my other stations.

Through Pandora I've found new music I never would have otherwise and been able to listen to music you just don't hear on the radio down here without having to spend a fortune on CD's and downloads.