The bulletin board that hangs over my desk started out life as a collage. I’d seen a photograph of a wall or large board covered with artifacts from someone’s life. The complex, colorful layers, and textures made it into art and I was inspired.
Mine developed pretty well. Saved birthday cards showing feisty older women and snarky comments. A collection of key chains representing many of the companies I‘d worked for, places I’d visited, and gathered from random places. Notes and photos. Pins and snippets of wisdom.
It never achieved the rich visual quality of the picture that inspired it, but it did evoke many memories and smiles whenever I rested my gaze on it or looked for the perfect place to add something new.
Then we moved. Objects of this type do not take well to unprotected transportation. I’m still finding artifacts stuck under the seats and down deep in files and boxes. In the new place there was no room to display this ever evolving creation so there seemed to be little point in attempting to reconstruct it or create it anew.
Eventually I realized I needed a bulletin board over my desk for more conventional reasons – to stick up notes and reminders.
I cleared the last of the artifacts off the board. Only a few items made the cut and stayed. Pretty soon it was covered in notes, index cards, newspaper clippings, and layers of stuff. Visually it was chaotic.
Now, I’m a fan of chaos. Chaos is the birthplace of creation in the quantum world. My bulletin board, at the material level, doesn’t follow quantum rules. It was just unsightly and disturbing.
One day I’d had enough. Everything came down. I started fresh with an eye toward order and creativity. If it doesn’t make me smile or laugh, if it doesn’t speak to me in a positive tone, if it isn’t visually pleasing, it doesn’t go on the board.
There are little messages; a 22-cent LOVE stamp, lapel pins displaying “excellence” and “I know”, a ribbon bearing the words “Live free. Be Free, Write your life.”. My favorite small metal frog, and a colorful howling coyote sit on tiny platforms folded from abstract calendar covers and pinned at eye level because they used to get lost on my desk. Cards with messages of inspiration (my favorite is from my daughter “You are doing a fucking great job.” It’s one she uses to reward her project teams.)
My brand colors displayed for easy reference. Print outs of three recent Rob Brezsny horoscopes that speak directly to my current journey. And way over on the right hand side, written in colorful markers are index cards with long term projects, near term goals, and potential ideas for evaluation, all having to do with building a business.
I’m reminded to play, to love, to celebrate, to hang in there because break through is near, to brag and self-promote as charmingly as possible but not to be timid about it, that my destiny is to be a catalyst of conviviality to help others meet their destinies.
My animal totems; the wolf and the raven, roam the space and lady bugs pin some items into place.
From art project, through chaos, to inspirational space. Maybe it does obey the quantum laws after all.