Creativity…In All Its Forms

Creativity, for me, has come in many different forms. Crocheting baby blankets, decorating sugar cookies with royal icing, making cards from scrapbook supplies, and writing books, to name a few.

But there’s one other creative aspect I enjoy just as much as all the others: systems.

Great, Susie. What the hell does that mean?

A friend of mine has repeatedly told me there’s the art of making scrapbook pages and cards, and then there’s the art of organizing all the supplies needed. Those are two very different things. I like them both equally.

I had a colleague introduce me to an application called Notion. I was excited about the possibilities, but the first thing they said was I’d either love it because I could do whatever I wanted with it, or I’d hate it because I could do whatever I wanted with it. Needless to say, the rabbit holes run DEEP with this program.

At first, I hated it. There were too many options. Too many ways to do the same thing. I didn’t understand it. I uninstalled the program and walked away from it. Then several months later, I had a thought.

As I was preparing for the Beside Us launch, I had ideas and tasks swirling in my head. There were too many to keep track of. I love lists, but I wanted a way to see everything all at once, particularly those items that were coming in the next week. Basically, a dashboard. But what would be the easiest way to create it, and more importantly, maintain it?

Then I remembered Notion and all of its possibilities. Even better, I was able to come at it from a different angle because I knew what I wanted to build, what I wanted to see, and how I wanted it to work.

Before I knew it, I had databases for Beside Us launch tasks, my books, characters, blog posts, social media posts, recurring expenses, UTMs, and measurement tracking. And that’s not even all of them. My most recent? One for books read and my TBR list. A girl’s gotta keep track, right?

I don’t know if many people would consider developing systems a form of creativity. I definitely would. There’s something so gratifying about entering data into a single system and having the ability to view it in multiple ways. And hey, if it keeps me organized, on track, and able to continue writing books…AND I know exactly where to find a character’s hair and eye color? Perfect.

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