Wooosh

A good friend of mine talks about that feeling of creative flow in which it gets easier to make your ideas real. It comes and goes on its own but you can certainly invite and you can definitely chase it way. You can at the very least leave the door open and cultivate the habit of saying yes to what you really want whenever and to the extent possible.

In my recent past when suddenly what I had seemed like a settled path overnight reshuffled into a kaleidoscopic choose-your-own-adventure game of life, I ended resorted to my usual geekish crutch these days for managing anything more complex than a shopping list: an airtable database.

In the midst of all the organizing and support and resistance and rebuilding efforts I didn’t want to lose site of the creative vector, and made sure to list nonwork and nonremunerative projects in the table, too.

This weekend I realized I need to update the list. Not all these project and efforts and ideas will go somewhere but time will tell and I am starting to see some very long-term things through, so I know this approach works.

Weirdly, getting busier, getting a job, having a lot going on, that all seem to just generate more ideas and possibilities. Sure, time is limited and you can overdo it, bite off too much, overcommit. I try to distinguish between things I’m interested in, monitoring, toying with, exploring and things I am focused on advancing in the forefront. This helps me keep the long tail in sight.