FALL is in the air..........Yahoo!

This is my first post in what seems like forever, but summer has been so darned hot and humid and icky and stormy and sticky and long that it's hoovered up all my energy, creative and otherwise.
I can handle the otherwise, because what doesn't get done, will hang around to be done another day.  Never been much of a Susie Homemaker type anyway, and as long as the family is fed and watered, and the Board of Health doesn't close us down, we're good. Besides, cobwebs are kind of a Halloween thing, and now I don't have to buy them at the dollar store.  Nuff said.
BUT.....life without being creative is kinda sucky.  Makes me feel a bit hungry and empty inside.  Like a little creature is in there needing to be fed.   
No new pieces on the work top. It's like a wasteland and far too neat. The only mess there is the dust that's accumulated over the last few months. Very few new ideas banging around amongst the old grey cells either.  It's darn lonely and dusty and echo-ey up there.  Sort of like an abandoned warehouse.  That's what I've done!!  I've abandoned my creative spirit, and it's gone up into the dusty old warehouse to curl up in a corner and die a lingering death.
Can't have that.  NUH UH, no way, no how, ixnay on the ethday. 
So here I am trying to squeeeeeeeze out some enthusiasm for getting myself back to work....shoulder to the wheel.......down to business......in the groove.......nose.......grindstone. Like that. 
Cooler nights and more restful sleep should help, and although we've been blessed with both lately, I'm still scrounging for ideas, and the oomph to transform them into art. 
Looking for inspiration, I've been cruising blogs and online studios, flipping through magazines and whining in my best friend and my hub's collective ears about it for long enough.  Watching what's selling and being published, I can only see what a great job others are doing and still can't figure out how to get my get up and go GOING. Not happening.  Part of the problem is the self doubt that we all must feel from time to time, especially when other artists around you are so prolific.  Their ideas and creativeness just make me withdraw all the more, and that's just it.  They are THEIR ideas.  Not mine.  Much as I admire the work of others, it isn't what I want, nay, need to do.  
Eureka!!! A brainwave!!!!!  
Revisit some of MY old works, notes, sketches, pieces that I still have on hand and try to recapture some of the satisfaction I felt when I completed them.  That's what it's really all about. The satisfaction of creating.
Case study number 1.  
I remember I had such a great time with this guy.  It was the first Fall, Halloween, Autumn piece that I had ever attempted and it came together quickly. I remember snickering about his corn cob chest, and his open shirt with the straw hanging out.  Both ideas came from vintage post cards that I saw online.  His pot belly kept getting bigger and bigger. His stance more and more 'in your face.'  I loved the fact that it didn't have to look like a person and that I could be fast and loose with proportions and facial (yeah, right) features.  Could use bright colours. The crow didn't have to look 'real'.  It didn't have to be perfect.  It just filled the niche in my soul that it was created for.  I didn't make it to follow a style or trend.  It just was, and that was good enough.   
I still have him, in spite of offering him for sale online at one time.  My DH actually bought him from me.  He didn't want me to get rid of this piece, and I was glad I didn't have to list it again.  I'm glad he's still here, sitting on a shelf.  The scarecrow.  Not my husband.  That shelf would never hold him.  He sits in the recliner.   
Feelin' a little somethin' somethin' here.  Think I'll go and open a new package of clay and see what happens.  I'll let you know.