One Little Word :: Vision Board . February

I took this quick (i.e. fuzzy, badly lit) snapshot of this month's One Little Word project (a vision board) a few weeks ago when the modge podge was still sticky. It's literally been years since I have done a collage and though I felt apathetic about the project in the beginning, I was loving the process shortly after beginning. In fact, I loved it so much I made a part two: "People that Totally Inspire Me" vision board a few days after.

There's something almost delectable about the process of cutting and arranging and gluing. It was my soul's version of graphic design long before the Adobe creative suite made its way into my world. Couple that with the "don't worry about an image's specific rhyme or reason" process of making a "vision board" and it became a very fun/ freeing project for me. Making, making, making. No judgment. No logic. Just something that I deemed aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. And then the Mister threw both boards away...

He was cleaning while I was at painting class. He was genuinely sorry for his mistakes. Stuff happens.

But, in a way, that's almost better. It's not supposed to be about the end product but rather the process of putting this all together.

I know that, personally, I put so much value into having something to show. Something that screams, "Hey! Look at me! Look what I did!" Something that people will look at and then give me little golf claps of validation, "Good for you."

And then when I create something and I don't get that validation from others (silence, no golf claps, no blog comments, no high fives) all the happy energy and joy that came from "making" leaves and I am left with this putrid green hole in my gut where the light had been shining before. The happy inner whispers of "you created something" get crowded out in the absence of validation which screams out, "No one else likes it so you obviously SUCK."

And so really this post isn't about making vision boards (which I enjoy) but about validation (which I obviously enjoy as well). It's about being okay with just the process and forgetting about the project which has found it's way ino the recylcing bin. It's something that I'm really trying to work through in multiple areas of my life and, truthfully, not that fun to share. But there it is.

Am I the only one who struggles with this?