Tonight I began working on my 2016 vision board. I met Linda, my sister, at our mom’s house. Mom not only joined in the process of creating a board, she fed us too! We each enjoyed a stack of pancakes with warm maple syrup before clearing the table and hauling out the magazines.
I love creating a yearly vision board, which is a collage of pictures and words that captures my dreams and goals for the upcoming months. I include my word and symbol for the year. And I search through magazines for those pictures and phrases that represent the vision I am casting.
My sister and mom began creating boards with me a couple of years ago. I cherish these evenings of companionably browsing through a variety of publications, chatting about what we are searching for, sharing our life journeys. We laugh, and tell stories, and help each other find specific words or images.
Kindness is my mom’s word for 2016 and she located it quickly, adding the cutout to her stash. Linda hasn’t found her word, Courageous, yet. And I’m still searching for Surrender. I may have to print my word out after typing it on my computer. We giggled when Mom happily exclaimed over the word Gorgeous as she cut around it. Of course it will go on her board! My mother is a gorgeous woman, inside and out.
We did not finish our boards this evening. It will take at least one more evening together and maybe two. The surrender for me is allowing it to take as long as it takes. There was a time when I felt I had to complete my vision board before the new year started. It became one more task to squeeze into the last week of December and I often rushed to complete the board.
Now I enjoy the process and let the board come together as it will. If it takes the whole month of January, that’s fine. If the creation of it takes longer than that, it’s still not a problem. The board will be on view in my studio all year.
I have images to print out that I collected as I worked through The Artist’s Way. These will be added to my board and I marvel at the perfect timing of doing those chapters as the new year approached. I’m very aware that my board is shifting, as I am shifting. I’m playing around with calling it by another name. But for now, a vision board it is.
I recognize that vision is art as well, a way of seeing beyond what is currently in front of me. I am making the invisible, visible.
