My New Year's Goal- Part One: Keep a Notebook of Ideas

Ideas come together like a collage, a bit here then there

I'll be walking around the kitchen, cleaning up or putting to rights and thoughts will float through my head. You know, how it happens, you're doing some mundane task and the thoughts just lead from one to another, until you realize that you're miles away from where you started and not even you can trace how you got from thought A to thought G. But thought G is a whole lot more interesting then thoughts A-F and suddenly you're caught. You've thought of something. Something BIG! It's exciting and makes you a little nervous, but how supremely cool is that? If you can pull it off. And suddenly life rears it's ugly head and you have to go answer the phone, or the door, or stop the dryer from buzzing and waking the baby. All the normal every day things that you suddenly resent because in the course of doing them, you lost your train of thought and have only a vague memory that you did, indeed, think of something amazingly cool.

That is why you need a sketchbook, notepad, or notebook by your side at all times. Cause, trust me sisters, it's not nearly as easy to remember those flashes of genius as it once was. They call it mommy brain, and I am SURE that it's being studied in some university some where and someday soon we'll learn all about how it is an actually malady and chocolate with coffee really is an actual treatment for it. BUT til then, we have to suffer in silence, hiding from the rest of the world how hard it is for us to remember ideas from one moment to the next. It's not that we can't think, we're thinking all the time, it's that we can't remember one thought after we've had a few more come after it.

Thoughts wing their way to our Conscious at very inopportune times

So as you contemplate the New Year approaching, how about a notebook to go with it? Why not start a journal on your iphone, and write down the vague thoughts that come throughout the day? Or how about if you sit down a few moments each day at lunch and write down a paragraph or two? Me, I usually start and end the day dreaming up ideas in bed. It's quiet, my brain is still in that dream state where thoughts float unconsciously and I can make connections without thinking quite so hard. That's when the majority of my ideas begin, where they take form, and where they come to a point of full conception. I don't know about you, but I think things out for weeks before I ever take action. A project that may seem spur of the moment, even to me, is usually the result of barely conscious thought spread over weeks. A morning day dream there, a brief crystallization there, then much later a quick insight as I drive or cook. They all add up to an idea that has enough form to act upon.
So this year, how about making a resolution to capture as many of those fleeting thoughts as possible? I bet we'd both be amazed by what we ended up with. :)