Creativity is cyclical. As it goes, many aspects of life can either destroy or produce creativity. You wear it like an ancient dress—imbued with language, culture, traditions, and beliefs.

Ouch. Thorny vines and gray, rotting leaves. The scraggly and overgrown garden truly needs a makeover. My broken trowel is woefully inept at breaking up the hardened soil. The world spins me into a deep isolation, stripped of my values and desires. Just as a cold brew of wrath and resentment begins, I turn to the concept of interdependence.

Pain asks me to “do something.” I wanted to learn how these figurative demands affect my Everyday Living. So, I created a new topic in my commonplace book: my pain metaphor.

The process of selecting topics for my commonplace book is fairly intuitive. The choices I make come from the topics I come across in my daily life. Each topic helps manage my records while directing where I’d like to go next. The beauty is I don’t have to be overly strategic at the start.