It is 11pm. I have three browser tabs open, two notebooks with conflicting notes, a half-finished whimsy sketch, a voice memo I recorded to myself at a red light that says "orchid — but make it FEEL like something," and a sticky note that just says "EDGES???" in aggressive capital letters.
This is a Tuesday.
How the Creative Process Actually Works (For Me, Specifically)
Step one: brilliant idea arrives at the worst possible moment. In the shower. While driving. During a meeting about something completely unrelated. Never at my desk with a blank notebook open. Never.
Step two: I try to capture it. Sometimes successfully. Sometimes I think "I'll remember this" and then I absolutely do not remember this.
Step three: I sit down to work on it and immediately think of three other things I should be doing instead.
Step four: I do one of those other things. Then another. Then I open Instagram "just for a second."
Step five: forty minutes later I am watching a video about a woman who restores vintage typewriters and I have forgotten what I was originally doing.
Step six: I return to the original idea with fresh eyes and it turns out the detour was actually useful somehow. OR it wasn't and I just lost forty minutes to typewriters.
It's about 50/50.
The Organized Chaos System
Here's what people don't understand about creative brains: the chaos is not the problem. The chaos is the process.
I am genuinely, functionally creative. Ideas come fast and from unexpected angles and they connect in ways that surprise even me. The whimsy pieces, the liminal concept, the storytelling within a puzzle design — that's all squirrel brain doing its best work.
The problem is that squirrel brain also has to do the spreadsheets. And the inventory. And the emails. And the shipping. And the marketing. And the day job (in which I am extremely organized and always on top of things). And dinner.
The Day Job Sits in the Corner Judging Me
Yes, I have one. A real one. One that pays real money. On a real but flexible schedule.
Which means Liminal Puzzle Co often gets the margins — the early mornings, the late nights, the weekends, the lunch breaks where I'm physically present in one place and mentally entirely somewhere else designing a puzzle nobody's asked for yet.
The creative brain does not clock out at 5pm. It does not respect weekends. It does not care that I have a work meeting in the morning.
It just sends me ideas at 2am and expects me to be grateful.
(I am usually grateful. I am also usually tired.)
How I Actually Get Things Done
Lists. Truly, embarrassingly, aggressively lists.
If it is not written down it does not exist. If it is written down in more than one place I will do it twice or not at all. I have a system. The system is imperfect. The system is mine.
I also give myself permission to follow the energy. If I sit down to do inventory and my brain wants to draw whimsy pieces, I draw whimsy pieces. Fighting the creative current is usually slower than riding it and circling back.
This is either a productivity strategy or an elaborate justification. Jury's still out.
What I Know For Sure
Every puzzle that exists started as a squirrel brain moment. A flash of something. A "what if." A detour that turned into a destination.
The kitchen counter office and the garage workshop and the sticky notes and the 2am voice memos and the day job holding everything together — it's all part of the same chaotic, creative, completely unhinged operation.
And somehow, puzzles come out the other end.
Beautiful, intentional, worth-your-time puzzles.
The squirrel knows what it's doing. Usually.
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