Reframing

Here's my frozen dog.

I've been thinking a lot about "reframing" as it is a "newbie" word like newbie that has come up a lot in my life lately. And since I'm a word smith, when I use words like reframing and newbie, I wince. I mean, after all, doesn't reframing mean taking that tired old seventies' style purple frame off the 11" x 14" wedding photo and replacing it with something more modern? And shouldn't it be hyphenated at the very least, as in re-framing?

Then it occurred to me that reframing is exactly what creative people do all the time with everything. It's one of the ecstasies and the curses of being creative. There's nothing that we don't tweak, not a thing that we can't see all the different permutations of, and where they could lead.

This is the joy of it. My artist father could never just look at scenery without coming up with photographs he wanted to take, paintings to paint, a jewelry design or twenty designs or a hundred designs. I do the same in my writing, everywhere I look, everything I experience I come up with another idea or a hundred ideas.

Which brings me to the photo above: haven't we all adopted this pose at one point or another? Awash in too many ideas, lost in a sea of options, or just distracted to the frozen point? This is the curse of reframing.

So how to keep it as a strength? By being selective of course.

Huh? What?

Well, just because I have ten different ideas doesn't mean I need to pursue and develop each and every one right at that moment, that just leads to freezing up. I scribble them down with enough info to remind me and return to the ideas later. By that time, I'm more objective and the ideas to pursue pop forward.

What are some the ways you reframe? How does it solve problems? Create problems?