Where Is Your Messy Zone?

Where is the area you can be your imperfect self to learn and create?

Transcript

0:13 Hi, this is Katie and thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space Podcast. And this is a podcast about feeling the world intensely, creating time to evaluate your needs, and planning your space and life to fit you.
0:30 So today I wanted to talk about where is your messy zone and what is a messy zone? So we have them all over the place, right?
0:41 We have them in real life, we have them talking to friends and we have them digitally and probably a myriad of other things and I would love to hear from you.
0:53 Like this is not an exhaustive list so if I missed one, I would love to hear from you and my contact info is in the description.
1:02 But these are the ones that I came up with because I'm the most familiar with these in my own messiness and working.
1:10 So when I'm talking about messiness, when we create things, it's about having space to create and whenever you're creating, you're experimenting.
1:24 So we're not going to be creative with every single step being perfect. So like we aren't going to paint the perfect circle and then on top of that paint the perfect color and then the perfect banana or something.
1:43 Like all of those steps because we're human and there's mistakes that we make are going to be imperfect. And also we need to gather our supplies and tools in an area so that we can grab them easily.
2:05 So this can be again like a studio workspace where you're creating a physical thing. This could be a digital workspace where you're opening up apps like Photoshop and getting your images put in and then having folders or directories that you are saving iterations to or experimenting and trying different
2:32 sizes. And so in those projects it's about having the flexibility to allow a lot of imperfection to happen. I guess that's down to it like what is that messy zone.
2:51 It's containing all of these imperfections which can and also just be your final version like imperfection isn't a bad thing.
3:04 It's actually could be the final thing that you do and that's what makes it so beautiful. So in my example like I would do web design and things like that and where there's like okay we need to change this and we need to change that.
3:22 I will admit my folders can get a little messy and I was thinking about this where I need these folders to kind of contain my messiness and it's okay to have like extra files in there because they could be just inspiration.
3:40 They could be a direction or showing that we shouldn't go in a certain direction but these folders aren't like pristine and sometimes I'll go through like at the end of a project and maybe take some things out that I just don't need because I need to save on hard drive space but I feel like it's the
4:04 same thing as having like a desk that when you're in the middle of creating you need to have all of these paints or papers or any kind of materials out so that you can finish your project and then put most of it back.
4:25 It doesn't have to be pristine at the end because it's still a working desk space that you're going to be creating in but I have claimed the area as like my messy zone and on my computer I've claimed that as my messy zone.
4:42 It's okay for me to be messy in those areas. Now this could be constantly trying out new recipes that you always have some things out because you're ready to dive in.
5:03 I think that's the other key part about a messy zone is that there's things around to allow you to easily dive back in because you have those resources, those materials on hand and that space cleared enough.
5:18 Pre the dive back in. The problem comes with your messy zone if it's just unusable. If hard drive it doesn't have any more room on it.
5:31 If your studio desk area is like I can't even work here you go. Walk up to it and you're like oh my goodness I need to clean this up or I can't do anything here.
5:43 Those are the limitations of the messy zone. Also a messy zone can be like a planner or journal where you are writing out all of your ideas and again it's about all the imperfections coming out but all of those ideas are getting captured.
6:03 It can be journaling about your days so that when you go to therapy you can bring those ideas back but your journal is like this you're saying this is my messy zone.
6:24 It's also saying like I can be imperfect here. I can try and experiment things here. I can think about using new techniques.
6:38 I can learn in this space. So all three of these definitely be learning spaces right. You can learn new techniques in a studio space.
6:49 You can learn it online and in Photoshop or whatever applications you're learning or you can learn through therapy techniques like hey I'm expanding myself and I'm getting all of this out into a journal.
7:05 And another messy zone that I thought about was like in business coaching or group coaching of some kind where there's mentor groups or it's just one person leading a lot of times it's coming together with a lot of just ideas and the most welcoming spaces I know are ones that you can be messy in.
7:27 You can be your full self and you can bring incomplete ideas and have others bring their incomplete ideas and bring them together and create something new from there as well or that you're creating your own thing and getting it further along because you're in this the number one thing through all of
7:48 this is like having a space to initially sit down and be inviting having a space to be messy and incomplete and imperfect and then saying you know here I'm going to come back here again so let me tidy up a bit so I can continue my learning when I come back tomorrow so let me know did I miss anything
8:17 I'm sure I am but I would love to hear from you what type of other messy zones can you think of could it be community-based where you're going to a library and you're collecting all the books and doing some research could it be in creating a an outdoor activity where everyone's coming together and doing
8:39 some kind of sport or like physical activity and everyone brings their imperfect selves and it's messy for a while right like soccer practice or something and then you clean up and then you go home so what are the messy zones that you participate in and that you have outlined as your own that's the 
9:00 biggest question so thank you for joining me on the My Senses, My Space Podcast