Cocktail Napkins
MANY GOOD IDEAS BEGIN ON COCKTAIL NAPKINS, YES…THEY REALLY DO. But the same thing occurs on torn scraps of paper, sticky notes, backs of envelopes and the margins of a magazine. Maybe it has something to do with free time—that is, time to spend at least not in the hot pursuit of your primary duties—time stolen from the day or night when you are not pushing all your brain power toward the solution/rumination on a particularly pressing issue, promise, deadline.
Here is when your brain downshifts a level, finds a more comfortable gear, and cruises to unplanned destinations, oddball thoughts and streams of seemingly unrelated ideas.
Today I’m thinking about the hot mini trend for adhesive-backed wall graphics and remembering back to all my “cocktail napkin” designs for temporary tattoos, that had I pursued them then, would have been ready for market about two years ahead of the market high point. Ok, I say (kicking my own butt), you could be rich and lazy somewhere.
But then I remember my 401k and my other funds, dwindling significantly down, and having missed the temporary tattoo phenomenon doesn’t seem so crucially painful anymore. Gone is the regret about what might have been. And I find myself thinking about what I have been able to protect. Maybe being one of those small businesses with around 10 people fueling the base of the economy–providing a mature, valuable, strategic, adaptable set of creative services that help other businesses be stronger–doesn’t seem so small. Maybe having reserve capital and a good credit line, good relationships and earned knowledge, doesn’t seem so trivial as an achievement in this timeframe when the economic waves are very high and unpredictably dangerous.
It’s Saturday, with stuff to do but not really an action-packed day, as these thoughts wander in. Japanese koto music in the family room, French toast on the stove, Haitian Blue coffee in my bloodstream and Wii-Fit diabolically challenging my core balance, I still have mind space to contemplate the scraps of paper, envelop backs and clippings from this week’s world of news. The universe moves in, my accountability blinders come off, and I can be—for a brief time—me, wandering the landscape of my mind, the part I still own.
And maybe I’ll go somewhere important today.
Market Mini-trend
See wall graphics at the following,
and many other, sites:
wonderfulgraffiti.com
grahambrown.com
Ozwalled.com
Whatisblik.com
Domestic.fr
Modernseed.com/wallgraphics.html
2jane.com (walls and windows)
Thinkgeek.com (Nintendo wall graphics: Super Mario, Donkey Kong, Sproing!)
Burkedecor.com (Modern Dose line)
Wallwords.com
Istickup.com
Potterybarn.com (monograms)