Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has been lovely and you have some fun planned for the weekend. Before we get to the weekend, however, I wanted to take a few minutes to share some ideas about organization and creativity that I’ve been thinking about this week. I have numerous projects going on at the moment so I’ve been thinking a lot about how to be organized to get everything done, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about how to partner organization with creativity and how that works in my life and work.

So I didn’t want to talk about creative organization. I think there are enough blogs out there writing about that. Instead I just wanted to share a few observations about how organization and creativity, at least for me, are partners instead of head-butting opposites. I know that there are people out there who believe that creativity has to be messy and I’d agree. But having a messy creativity process, like getting paint on the floor or ink on your wrists from all the edits on your manuscript are not the same as being unorganized. Sure, creativity is messy, just look at my kitchen table when I’m writing or my work desk when I’m creating a new tutorial or video for my classes. It’s a super-big mess, maybe one that I’ll share sometime with pictures. It’s messy, but it isn’t unorganized.

Being organized for me is a way of saving time and headspace so I can devote more energy to being creative. If my stuff is organized (and I have less of it to organize), then I don’t waste precious minutes or hours searching for what I need, be it some more fountain pen ink, my audio recorder, or a stack of notes for a video script. I’m a firm believer in putting things away, in the same place, every time. It not only keeps it organized, but then I don’t have to try to remember where I last saw something. I know where it is.

This, in turn, allows me to free up space in my head to organize thoughts and projects. Do you ever have days when it feels like the index cards or files in your brain are all hodge-podge on the floor? That each thought you have scurries away before you can link it to the next? I feel like that sometimes, but notice that I feel that way a lot less if I’ve been diligent about organizing my stuff, my time, and my projects. Then I actually have the room in my head to make connections I’d otherwise miss in the noise and I’m calm enough to get something new done. And, I like that.

One of the projects I’m currently working on is a poster session for ALA Annual. I’ll be there on Sunday, June 28th, from 2:30 to 4:00 pm in the Exhibit Hall. You can see details about the poster session here. I’d love it if you’d stop by. We can talk graphic design and libraries. It will be fun or at least hopefully not awkward. I’ll be posting more about poster design as I continue to work on them in the coming weeks.

I hope you have a wonderful spring weekend. I’ll be back soon. Allons-y!