Touchstones
When The Enrichment Project began to stretch into its third year, I felt like I’d been dropped into a giant maze. I start jotting notes and quotes onto sticky notes, and soon, my house is papered in rainbow squares: insights from our monthly online prompts and hundreds of hours of interview tape from weekend retreats, late-night confessionals, and epic car trips. Quotes go on tangerine squares, insights on cerulean, source clarifications on chartreuse, questions on violet.
There is so much violet.
I get bossy with some hot pink, try pinning these to posterboard, outgrow that bounded space, transition to a wall mirror, then the clusters just explode back all over the house. Sticky notes flutter from avocados, while others stare back at me from my bathroom mirror, while still others escape whenever I open my purse.
Mom always said “Measure twice; cut once”
Eventually, my notes begin to coalesce around seven topics I dub Touchstones, for I find that touching them daily is a way to check in with myself and my own creativity:
And, of course, much later, I select actual stones to represent these keys to creativity. They’re small enough to be tucked into a pocket or hidden in a fist, and I find myself carrying them daily as a Radical Ritual designed to really work with their energies.