The wall of sticky notes

This isn’t another project. In fact, I have forbidden myself to call it as such, because I have started far too many projects in the past that have never finished. Of course, I should keep my options open, but after saying Project Simplify Georgie was the last project I would ever have (and it looks like I never kept it up, haha), I feel like I shouldn’t call things projects anymore.

Anyway, this started off as The Butcher Paper Project, a project in which I envisaged myself filling up a huge piece of butcher paper (just imagine a huge wall-sized piece of paper, really) with things I wanted to do. Like a bucket list, if you will.

However, this goes against a few things I have told myself in the past:

• Project Simplify Georgie should be the last project you ever have. Stop making projects. Because I never kept up, and I never finished them.
• Stop making lists. Stop making goals. Stop writing things to do. Envisage things as priorities, and important things that you need to do will always be at the front of your mind without you writing them down.
• Don’t make a bucket list. Just savour every moment. (I killed my “101 in 1001” list.)

But you know what? Sometimes you have to go back to your roots. Sometimes you have to go back to what you were familiar with, what you used to know, because you can’t forget that it brought you here today. I was the girl obsessed with to-do lists, the girl who wanted everything she could get out of life, and wanted to do everything and anything. And regardless of how I set out to do those things, I am still that person. I picked myself right back up again after I lost my job, the kind comments of my readers were so touching, and I kept on walking as if I had never fallen down.

In 2009, I bought a packet of sticky/post-it notes. I was always against using them because they were very pricey for pieces of paper with fancy adhesive. At $5 a pop, I refused to use these bright pink and yellow ones until I opened the packet a month ago. Last week, I started writing on them. I wrote positive notes, and then I wrote things I wanted to do. It had always been in my head — that once I finish my master’s degree, I would party and have fun and get some things done.

So I stuck them on my wall. Things like going ice skating, learning how to drive, doing some design commissions, cleaning my blog, redesigning my portfolio, reading books, buying a present for Brandon’s birthday, getting a haircut, making Christmas cards, cleaning my room, buying some music, and so on.

Without even realising, or intending to, I finished a few of them.

My idea was to destroy the post-its, but Brandon said, “But don’t you want to see your progress?”

As a simple, short, matter-of-fact comment from my younger brother — someone who I always fought with as a kid, argued with, but had many good times with, yet someone I rarely got to see because I got home so late at night from work and he disappeared off to school in the mornings — it made me feel happy inside, that he gave attention to what I was doing, and appreciated the idea and gave me some moral support. On Sunday evening he was poking me and shaking me in my chair to do my university work, perhaps a little keen that we would both be finished with our respective chapters of study, he having his last HSC exam on Monday.

I also had my university Masters presentation, which I didn’t speak much in, out of shyness, but that was okay as it was a group project. But it was my last class ever — I only need to write a 2,000 word reflection now, but that shouldn’t be too bad at all.

When I finished a task on a post-it note, I moved it to a space at the side of the wall.

I got a haircut yesterday. Not much of a chop, but enough to refine my layers. Then I went to the jewellery store and I bought some rings. I went home and made a great dinner with salmon. I slept early, and woke up feeling great.

I got my Instagram prints from Origrami earlier in the week, too.

Not having a job for the time being is pretty swell. I don’t need money. I’ve got enough to get me by. Everyone knows money doesn’t buy happiness.