Advice Cards

 I was working on cleaning our house, eternally, and I found a box in our bedroom that had a teal plastic index card box in it. As I am now 50, I tend to keep good boxes made of all kinds of materials, because this is one of the lots in life you bear when you become 50. You keep a good box because it's a good box, and it could be handy someday.

Turns out it was already handy, because it had in it probably 200 3 x 5 index cards. Most of them were blank. About 20 of them had things written on them, taped to them.

They were from 2013-2014. This was when I was doing The Artist's Way and Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron.

I have a whole thing I think about this, and it's in one of the green notebooks I was keeping for preparing for submitting for the Hearst and I need to figure out what it was, but it wasn't all positive, but it's fine, it can go here.

The thing is, I have lots of books, in to be read piles, in bookshelves to look like I am smart because I own them, but I probably haven't touched them since I bought them and put them on said bookshelf, books, and books, and books. Both of my kids are bookworms; I tease Tabitha about them having to have no less than 4 books with them at a time: at least two they are currently reading, a back up book, and a back up back up book. I tease because I did the same dang thing when I was a kid, and I'm proud that they do it, and I also think it's cute.

The point is, I don't know where my copy of these two books went, but I do know I was working The Artist's Way during this time so I am pretty sure the index cards with the things written on them came from one of those two books as a suggestion.

Some of the index cards have quotes on them. Some of them are pictures I printed off of the internet and then scotch taped to the index card. The other side of the index card had the date it was taped or written, where it came from, maybe some other things I thought were meaningful. Except, of course, why I was doing it.

Which is important to Being Autotelic. Do you have to know why you're doing what you're doing? No, not exactly. I pick up a pen and a notebook and begin to write because I am writer. I might decide to make a painting, and I will get out my canvas (often a remnant from Walmart or Joann's (RIP) and some paints and paint because I am a painter. I get out yarn and a crochet hook and start making a blanket because it soothes my anxiety (at least until I had issues with my left arm and had to stop). The point is, I do the creating because I want to create. It's fun. It's soothing. It's what I do.