In-spir-a-tion

So people that inspire me, though who are not famous (I'll save that for next week) are my mother, aunt, and sister. They may seem inconsequential to advertising, but I think they develop principles which are important for people in the advertising world to understand and harness.
I think I come from a very creative family, at least from my mother's side. My father's side are all lawyers or professors :) . My mother is an interior designer for yachts. She has to walk onto a dingy, horribly decorated boat, and see it's absolute and complete potential. Then she has to alter that potential to go along with what the client wants. Usually what the clients wants is very different than what my mother wants, which is why the client needed her in the first place. When I look at her designs, and when I ask her questions, most of her inspiration comes from natures. She loves being in the garden (and hers is beautiful) and so she like fabrics and styles that bring the outside in. Anything that she can put a pretty, not tacky, tropical pattern on, she will.
My aunt, though less creative in the artistic sense, has been creative enough to make her own jobs. Jobs that I didn't even knew existed, and theoretically they didn't because she created them. However, what people are willing to pay for baffles me. She was a stump grinder. Someone to come in, after you cut a tree down, and she grinds the stump so that all remains of the tree have been demolished. If this doesn't illustrate how very different my mom and aunt are I don't know what would. She draws her inspiration out of necessity. When she needs money, she looks for a need people have, that is currently not being fulfilled, and she fulfills it.
My sister is a pre-K teacher. She happens to be the most successful teacher because of the creativity she brings to the classroom. Although her inspiration for the activities comes from the children in the class: what they'd like to do, what seems to keep them intrigued the longest, etc, her artistic talent is innate. Her class always has the best art projects. However, she chooses to teach in a non-traditional way, and you can see that the students learn more from it. Rather than repetition she creates rugs and toys that allow the kids to play with the subject matter. Instead of sitting counting quarters she has the kids count out beads and make maracas. She says most of her success is trial and error, sometimes an idea works, and sometimes it doesn't. She just has to adapt and work with the ones that do to succeed.