Creative thrifting.

What's old can be new again.

While browsing in a bookstore last night, I gasped “John Irving has a new novel!” to no one in particular. The clerk chimed in “Yes, it just came out last week.”

40 years after the release of “Cider House Rules,” Irving is revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud’s Maine and spinning a new tale with fresh themes and some recycled characters.

Reviews are mixed, yet I couldn’t help but admire the creative recycling. I mean 1985! Reagan was president and Cider House Rules’ cover features fonts offensive to designers today.

If Irving can reach back four decades for inspiration, you’ve got no excuse to not poke around in your more recent past.

What’s something you created that still makes your heart swell?

How could you recast, modernize, or reissue it? What has changed in the world, and within you, that opens doors to an entirely new telling?

For me, I found my older son Henry’s baby book while cleaning out the garage. It’s chock full of hand-written accounts of his earliest days, months, and years. Absolute pure gold. I typed it up and it’s 37 pages long.

That alone was a creative reissuing — digitizing a family heirloom and instantly emailing it to family.

The stories inside sparked laughter. In one, I ask 6-year old Henry if we should call to check on a classmate home sick with the stomach flu. After a pause he asks “If someone throws up on the phone, does the throw up land on the person on the other end?”

Other stories reveal early personality traits emerging. Henry’s need to stop and painstakingly read every LOST DOG poster in town, keeping a vigilant eye out, assuming when the posters came down that the pet was recovered. That compassionate soul is fully intact today, thank goodness.

Living inside these stories stirred something else in me. A deep knowing that I have a new TED Talk percolating inside me.

My idea worth spreading? “Today’s kids are over-photographed and under-chronicled.”

What’s your next creative reissue? I can’t wait to see it.

Until next time, remember that creativity knows no bounds.