STARTING AND STOPPING

At the beginning of Covid, March 15th to be precise, and also my birthday, I made a list. I am a perpetual list maker, a story board creator, a sticky note addict, writing endless plans of what I need to do, want to do. All part of the creative process, I tell myself. To do lists and life plans and organizational charts, brain dumps, then reorganizations of all of the lists when I realize that this lists I have poured my heart out in creating for the future me have sat there waiting for that very future me.

List making is an active process. My personal theory of list making is to get out all of the endless brain jumble on to some magic space under the illusion that I am in my highest state of creative fire.

This is a truth. When I am in that space where all things — everything, all thoughts, diagrams, ideas, are mysterious possibilities waiting for the magic wand to work that is my process, there is a momentum that takes hold of me that is a force like no other.

Once I get it all out and my walls are covered with bright neon sticky notes, labeled with matching sharpie colors, I walk away. It is like the serenity of the bed time ritual when you have washed up, changed clothes, and that first slide into those clean sheets you washed that day. There is a calm that washes over me when I go through this experience of pure fiery creation and it reminds me that if and when I set my mind to something, results happen.

This process has worked for me for most of my life. Many sticky notes sit there in wait…