“A vision board is a collage or collection of images of tangible and intangible things you want in your life.”

I have a real vision board, much better than the one I created (above) on Oprah’s website today. Only it’s not a board. It’s a file folder stuffed with images and quotes I’ve cut out or copied down since high school. At the time, each one spoke to some deep part of my heart or soul–showing a path to answer some need or fill some void. I didn’t know while I was collecting all this stuff that I was actually gathering the component parts of a vision board. In fact, I’d never heard of a vision board until I read Rarasaur’s Prompt for the Promptless this week. I thought the snipping and filing was a manifestation of my innate (but so far under control) hoarding tendencies. Beyond the actual collecting, I really had no solid plans for all of this inspirational fodder.

After reading Rara’s links this morning (to the point of almost being late for work), and finally having an idea of just what sort of end product my clippings yearned for, I decided to have a go at making a trial vision board on Oprah’s website. In the interest of time I just chose images from the 500 or so archived at the site, although I had the option to upload my own. I added my own text, futzed around with the layout (why are there no rounded corners? no cropping tools? no borders?), and saved the whole shebang as a .jpg on my hard drive. I could now theoretically use the file as my desktop background, therefore ensuring the vision board is in my direct line of sight on a daily basis, as it should be.

The purpose of a vision board is to subtly remind you of what you want in life, to encourage you to envision success in achieving these goals; keeping your aspirations at the forefront of your mind makes you more likely to recognize alternative paths to fulfillment when they are presented. Therefore, the board must be easily and regularly visible (a major flaw in my current vision folder system). Assuming that your wants and needs will change as priorities shift, reality bites, and dreams come true, your vision board should morph as well. New images should be added, tired old quotes should be replaced, the layout should shift to reflect the importance of today’s dreams (some people like to start from scratch instead of rearranging an existing board, but I don’t think I can find that much free time). These requirements lead me to conclude that a good old-fashioned corkboard and some pushpins are going to be the best tools to build and maintain my real vision board. I have no doubt that there are computer-savvy folks out there who would find it just as easy to build an electronic version and update the content with a couple mouse clicks, but I am still a fan of hands-on cutting and pasting.

I’ve already got a whole pile of projects that need my attention, but I will add “create vision board from accumulated stuff’ to the stack. Maybe I should make that task HIGH PRIORITY and add an inspirational quote to my board naysaying procrastination–then I can envision a project list with all the boxes ticked and open myself to new ways to make it so.

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Posts I commented on today:
(In case you missed the reason for this, I participated in the A to Z Blogging Challenge in April, and though I posted every day, I was lousy at visiting and commenting on other blogs. So for each day in May, I’ve vowed to visit and comment on three posts, one of which MUST be from a new blog I haven’t yet visited.)

Today’s Writing Prompt: Dreams (The One-Minute Writer)
W is for Writing Groups (A Guy Named Soo)  new blog of the day
Cat Heaven Island in Japan–Photos (Janice Heck)