Am I not just a tad young to be thinking of bucket lists? Perhaps, perhaps not. I have a lot to do!

It is said that you should write down the things you that you want. And since I am becoming increasingly forgetful I thought it best to write them down. And I do so enjoy checking things off a list. Most will involve travel as I love to travel and working in travel I know there is so very much to see. So here is my die happy bucket list in no particular order…for now.

• Photograph the Aurora Borealis – I don’t have the location in mind, be it Iceland, Alaska or Norway, that is largely irrelevant to me. I want to be able to experience how magical and completely surreal it must be to feel like you are inside a painting.
• Eat pizza in Italy – Or to be fair, explore Italy in general. I would love to go to Tuscany and paint and eat and learn how to cook. I want to see the amazing art I have learned about in school, in person. I want to sit quietly in cathedrals so old they defy explanation. I want to smooch someone very special under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice.
• Drive cross country – I want to drive across the US to see how amazingly diverse this country is…more specifically I want to see Graceland. So this trip is basically a Graceland beard.
• See Griffith Observatory - Ever since I was a young and I first saw Rebel Without a Cause I have wanted to go there. Not only is it a beautiful example of Art Deco architecture, but was conceived by a man named Griffith Griffith and has a ginormous pendulum. I mean the nerd factor here is through the roof. Plus James Dean stood there.
• Hot air balloon ride-just cause I think it would be nice, and reminds me of the Wizard of Oz.
• Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany (Visited Munich Sept 2012, was more fun that I could have imagined)
• New Years Eve in Times Square – this one I am a bit bipolar about. No part of me enjoys huge crowds in the cold, but I still think as a NYer it is my duty to try it once. There are a few NY things I have yet to do, as most NYers will tell you…we avoid the tourist stuff. But I would like to go to the top of the Empire State Building.
• Learn to play an entire Indigo Girls song on guitar. This will require me to develop patience. A good life goal.
• Spend some time — my vacation time — in some sort of volun-tourism capacity. I am not exactly sure how this one shakes out yet, but I want to visit somewhere, even here in the US, outside my comfort zone and do good.
• Stay in an over the water hut in Bora Bora/Maldives/Fiji/Cook Islands. Not sure which one will win out yet, although I do love the allure of Bora Bora.
• Petra at night. I have yet to see a more mystical place…via photograph anyway. It looks like a movie set, but is actually 3000 years old. I have a hard time comprehending something that old. People so long ago carving this structure out of a mountain. And to think “we” didn’t even know about it until the 1800s!
• Leaf peep in New England (Vermont) in the fall.
• Swim in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland
• Visit Bio Bay – Laguna Grande – in Puerto Rico. It is this lagoon in a mangrove forest that you kayak to. Apparently the mangroves emit a tannin into the water. The rare result is this microplankton that react to movement by glowing. GLOWING. The water glows as you move through it. Do I really need to explain this one? Feb 1, 2012 Update: A visit to the Luminous Lagoon in Jamaica, one of the other 3 places this exists checks this one off the list.
• Explore Prague – One of my favorite bridges is there.
• Climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Sydney Australia. This seems scary to me, so wondering if I could do it makes me want to try.
• Visit Banff. I am not sure why I am drawn to Banff, but it is just so majestic and different from everything I know. I might even try the Polar Bear Plunge into Lake Louise. Meep!
• See penguins. Can be in South Africa, Patagonia or even the funny little ones in Australia.
• Safari in Africa. I am hoping that will shake my Disney-view of the world where everything seems staged.
• Would love to do a costal California drive that ends up at Cakebread Winery in Napa.

…more to come

What if I run out of ideas?

What if there is a finite number that we are all allowed? Some people never come close to using them up so they never notice, but others blow through them, sharing them here and there like gangbusters and then in their mid thirties just go blank. For all of eternity.

No more craft projects, no more baking concoctions, no more writing, no more photography, no more trips, no more painting.

That would be bad. Who would I be if I wasn’t the creative one?

I had this thought as I was struggling with an ad campaign last week. I sent it off to be reviewed and was just drained. It was mostly driven by me thinking if they didn’t like it I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Would I have another round of creative left in me for that project? At that moment, after a 12 hour day, I really wasn’t so sure.

In the light of a new day in a new week I know I would have rallied and gone through the process again, but it really got me thinking about a well of ideas. I mean I know that ideas at least for me, are really more like a chain, one inter-linking into another. And if your brain is like mine you can get from the Beatles to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to art deco architecture in about a half a second. So the chances of me running out of ideas is pretty negligible.

But what if there is a tally? And each time you tossed one out there your bank goes -1? Would we be so free with the ideas? Would I let my mind rest more? I think it would sure be a lot quieter in there. Maybe it would make the ideas that are brought forward and expressed harder to dismiss. Maybe it would make people trust in their ideas more, or maybe civilization as we know it would come to a grinding halt.

Hard to say. Sounds like an episode of Sliders.

peonies, scream-singing, fresh sheets, thunderstorms, photography, midnight texts, warm bread, Frangelico on the rocks, candlelight, when a movie I love is randomly on TV even when I own it, black cherry mojitos, Rob Base, penguins, pink wigs, PMS 312, being near water, General Hospital, losing time when reading, snail mail letters, mix tapes, crayola crayons, getting butterflies, when my 3 yr old nephew tells me he misses me, fireflies, meteor showers, car dancing, room service, snowflakes, big fluffy blankets, long drives, coffin days, smell of burning leaves, starbucks iced passion tea, Adirondack chairs, lilacs.

It is also a truth.

{Disclaimer: I am a goober. Well-known, unfortunately well-documented fact.}

I guess I have always considered the best gifts the thoughtful ones..regardless of cost. So, boy who bought me that Pottery Barn bed that I  swooned over in the catalog, you are on the same level as the boy who learned how to play “Country Roads” on acoustic guitar just because I love it.  Unfair? Maybe…but who said love was fair. To me a mix tape has always been at the tippy top of the thoughtful scale. Maybe it is silly. I would much rather someone take time and share something of themselves, something they think I might like, something that maybe makes them think of me, of us…more than flowers or anything from Tiffanys. I know that seems like a girl impossibility, but it’s true. You have to really feel music for this line of thought to work for you, I am aware.

Let’s not be crazy, I of course, love and appreciate sparkly things. But I can buy my own sparkly things if I wanted to.

From High Fidelity (one of my top 5)

The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway… I’ve started to make a tape… in my head… for Laura. Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that make her happy. For the first time I can sort of see how that is done.

Rob gets it.

The choices and nuances of the “tape” say so very much about the person making it. If done well, it really is an art. The choices are personal, reflective…telling. They speak of what is important to the person making it, what they want to say, what they want you the listener to know. Like a personal secret code that needs to be cracked. Sometimes the only way to say what you feel is with a collection of songs. Sometimes things are just too big, too confusing, too everything that the only way is in a song..a few songs. Sometimes (always?) that stranger of a songwriter can better articulate how you feel than you can.

It isn’t always so serious. This doesn’t have to always be a romantic gesture. I have many beloved mixes from dear friends. They are like little time capsules. One of my favorites was just a friend’s way of saying “thank you” to her friends for helping her through a very difficult time. Another favorite was from a friend (made at my request) of all new music he thought I might enjoy. I hadn’t heard of a single song on that list, but enjoy them all now, if not only because it reminds me of him.

I miss the days of cassettes (or  CDs for that matter), of the physical representation of music. I miss the hand-written track list. Digital just seems less romantic to me. Maybe this is a good compromise?

I will forever make and share music in this way…and savor and save every one i receive …as with age, they are few and far between.

It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones– you know,
with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain.

It’s a place apart…from the vast, benign…lap of America.
From Almost Famous

Truer words…sigh.

The way I see it, there are 2 types of people with regard to music. Type 1 – Those who bop along and say they like music, maybe have a favorite song, maybe sing along in their cars…but it’s on their periphery, not a central player to their day. Type 2 – The other kind, well they feel the song to their toes. It isn’t background noise, it is mood altering, day-changing. They scream-sing in their cars. They dance in the kitchen while making Sunday breakfast. They wake up with a song in their heads–different from the one on the clock radio.

They are me.

I got to thinking about this after the Switchfoot/Goo Goo Dolls show on Tuesday. A live concert is powerful. Concerts have a way to consume me so completely, I cannot get far enough inside the music. I create iPod playlists based on the show’s set list  and then listen to everything I have by that band for days and days after. Reliving each moment. U2 was a big one for me, Sarah McLachlan as well…perennially the Indigo Girls have this affect on me. The way they can fill such a large space with just 2 guitars and 2 voices stuns me. I wondered if it was just me.

And I guess when I think about it, there are 2 types with in that type. I will say it–I do not like long drawn out guitar solos. I don’t enjoy minutes long instrumentals. You may look awfully sexy up there wailing on that guitar, but I find them a little self-indulgent…and well, with no way to participate, I get bored. It is the lyrics that capture me, always have.

I miss the days of liner notes. I rejoiced when a new album included the lyrics. Reading along, singing a long, learning my new favorites that much faster. I remember being little, like 3 or 4 years old and singing along to Leo Sayer “When I Need You”. That was the first song I can remember loving. The second was “Open Arms” performed by Andy Gibb on Solid Gold. Apparently, I have always liked sad sack music.

Occasionally when certain songs are heard unexpectedly, it is like taking a bullet.

There is a short but highly effective hit list that has the power to stop me dead in my tracks. It is what I imagine being shot in the chest actually feels like. The searing burning pain is palpable. I actually have a DO NOT PLAY playlist for this very reason. Music is that transformative to me.

Because it is so powerful, I can’t imagine I alone choose it. It certainly doesn’t feel that way. It must be a two way street. It is almost like a dysfunctional relationship. The drama and the agony! The highs and the lows! The push and the pull!

It is not just me in this thing.

Fear not, you are in good if not great company…mine. Now whether or not you fancy yourself a geek vs a nerd vs a dork, well that is up to you. I prefer “nerd” to “geek” even though some insist that the term nerd implies no social skills. Anyone that knows me will, I think, vouch that being social has never been a problem of mine.

Nerds obsess and take great joy in the details of their obsession. I like to think my level of nerd is not at the expense of my social skills. I am in my 30s and yet I still get completely tickled by the silliest things. My current nerd obsession is the tv show LOST. It hibernates between seasons, but we are now back in the final season and with that the perennial bloom of my obsession. That was the sound of my heart breaking. There are no words to accurately describe how in awe of the show I am. From the very first episode with the close up of Jack’s eye, I was hooked. And have been for all 5+ seasons. I take notes during Lost. I have season premier/finale parties with incredible, obsessive, scary detail that includes boarding passes and bags of peanuts. I revel in the complexity of the symbolism and woven, sometimes abstract (yet simple) human themes of good vs. evil, choice vs. destiny, redemption vs. revenge. These characters are all broken and damaged in some way and struggling and I have always gravitated to the wounded bird. I thrill in delight with the hidden clues to art, literature, religion, music, science.  It plays to all of my hot buttons: love, love lost, mystery, drama, suspense..and borders on science fiction (time traveling anyone?). The crazy thing is that all of our theories are just conjecture. We the audience are just guessing at what it all means, so you can hotly debate the meaning of everything. You HAVE to be smart to watch it, to get it. And I love that. It’s like a really pretentious nerd club. This may be the only thing in my life I would tolerate such pretentiousness. I can talk about it for hours, although I am running out of people who share my enthusiasm. Season 3 lost a lot of people, no pun intended. I am jealous of the people who get to write Lost blog commentary for a living.

Believe me when I say I realize I am about 2 episodes away from full-blown Trekkie.

And further proof that I indeed posses a nerd card…I had planned to write about my love of design and our toys and had no intention of writing about Lost. Clearly I need a Lost friend.

—Don Draper, Mad Men

Not sure I have ever heard that put so well.

It is a funny thing earning a living on something that is so seemingly fleeting. There is a certain amount of trust that comes from both sides in this little agreement that we have entered into. I trust that my ideas will come (and be viable) and my employer trusts the same, and trusts they will come in a timely manner. Unfortunately, (or fortunately?) innovation and creative thinking cannot be called upon like ordering a pizza or baking some cookies. That is what makes it valuable. Not to dramatize it, but it is like lightning striking–you never know when or where the best ideas will come from and they certainly can’t be forced. It is like Don says..let them be unproductive, until they are. We creative types are funny, and kind of frustrating I would imagine. You can’t will us into submission. Luckily (for me?) I think the better you are at this type of work, the more latitude you are given. You are allowed bouts of being unproductive, because the end result is usually worth waiting for.

In corporate environments, where productivity and profit are the driving force behind well everything, it can be hard to justify what looks to the casual observer like goofing off. Especially in a mixed environment with “non-creatives” that don’t really understand the way we think. When you have an in-house art department sitting next to IT people and accountants, the job functions (and typically personality types) are so diametrically opposed, it seems, that resentments can flourish. As a manager of the department I am tasked with walking the deadline driven, sometimes sweatshop-like production line…without burning them out.  Not only do I not want them to burn out, but I want them to flourish. How can you manage that without letting them (anyone really) blow off steam? Am I suggesting a wild foosball tournament or riding lawn movers through the office instead of meeting a deadline? Um no. But if someone needs to take a walk or read a mindless blog (eh hem) I would say LET THEM. My bosses may disagree however.

Seems to me like a bit of a luxury though. I probably could take more advantage of this concept if I wanted to, but who has the time!

As an artist, we rely on this invisible muse to swoop in and drive our creative process. I saw a speech that Elizabeth Gilbert gave on nurturing creativity. As a brief aside, I absolutely love her way of speaking and writing, she I find absolutely inspiring. I digress.

She  speaks to the seeming fragility of the creative person, siting the many tortured, fallen artists a long the way, “undone by their gifts” most of whom have collapsed at their own hand. She talks about this universally accepted notion that artistry leads to anguish. How did this become linked? Apparently years and years ago gifted artists attributed their creative bounty to a separate entity: the genius. The creative genius was not an internal voice, it was something to give thanks and praise to, absolving us when the creativity did not flow freely, letting us off the hook when there was a brick wall and insulating us from intense criticism. It wasn’t me…it was my ‘genius’. Some where along the way we swallowed this genius and took credit for its successes and wallowed in its failures. She suggests to protect the fragile artist, we need to get back to that…to be able to say “well, sorry Blank, I know you expected something spectacular and innovative, but my Genius failed to show up at work today”. Slacker Genius.

As someone who is expected by career choice to be creative every single day, the pressure can certainly wear on you. People are always saying how they don’t know how we do it…everyone has their own strengths I suppose? Personally I often wonder how people do finance or accounting all day. But where do these ideas come from? Sometimes I have no idea where the ideas come from, and let me just say–they aren’t all winners. Sometimes that page is so blank it can be paralyzing. It is easy to let yourself slip into that dark, idea-less abyss. A cavern that seems to have no out in sight. But the most rewarding solutions come after the darkest hour as it were. How do you get passed it?

Creativity begets creativity. It is like a muscle. The more you work it the stronger it gets. I find the ideas come faster when I am at my busiest. But it is amazing where the inspiration can come from. Your entire personal universe is available for inspiration if you are open to it. If you notice it. If you let it in. I am about to get hippieish…but I am inspired by small things: bunches of peonies, storm clouds, gas station candy displays, random songs on the radio–it is everywhere. And everyone is creative in their own way. For some people being creative is a less obvious exercise, but creative all the same.

I am going to have to reread this the next time my Genius is on holiday.