By Patricia A. McGoldrick »  Have you got a vision for your life? Your ideal job? Favourite place to live? Well, it seems that the news is out—it makes good sense to take a look at where you want to go in life--now. 

In the past, you may have set goals, resolutions, without too much thought; however, envisioning your future more concretely may be a venture well-worth pursuing.

This can be done by creating a vision board which is a graphic construction of pictures and words recycled from some of your favourite magazines; envelope yourself with visual items that resonate with you and where you want to go in life; fine-tune this initial hunt with a re-selection from the above images to make a cut-and-paste creation on a poster-sized surface.  According to Christine Kane, an artist/performer/life coach,

The idea behind this is that when you surround yourself with images of who you want to become, what you want to have, where you want to live, or where you want to vacation, your life changes to match those images and those desires.^[1]

Recently, I discovered the concept of vision boards through the website of Ms. Kane at http://christinekane.com/blog/how-to-make-a-vision-board ^[2] where she has posted her user-friendly article about vision boards, possible focal points for boards and easy-to-follow guidelines for how to make one of your own.

Ms. Kane lists and describes a trio of vision board types and has given directions on how to construct each one. Briefly, there is a vision board for the sure-minded person, the “uncertain” individual and, finally, one for those who wish to take a thematic approach with a focus on an event or life stage.^[3]

While I was experiencing a period of uncertainty, it is the second type that drew my attention—“‘the opening and allowing’ vision board”^[4]. As I read her article, I realized that, basically, I met the criteria listed by Ms. Kane for one who would be ready to construct this sort of board; I was recovering from depression and I had reached a point in my life where I needed to make a change. Personally, surrounded by uncertainty in the present, I did get caught up in the idea of visioning for the future; when I began the process, I realized that I needed to stop and think for a minute, to take an assessment of where I was at in my life at this moment. This creation became, for me, what I have come to refer to as a now board.

To start, I used a similar process of cutting and pasting as recommended by Ms. Kane, and I set about collecting the pieces: first a poster-board, half-size; magazines; scissors. At a quiet time in my day, I started to leaf through the issues, ones that I had never been able to part with. Ironically, this reusing/recycling aspect of the activity made it easier to weed out items on my over-stuffed book shelves in the family room. Images and words caught my eye as I browsed, cutting here, snipping there. After an hour or so I had amassed a sizeable collection of clippings. Then, I gathered up these wispy irregulars to pack into an oversized folder. There they sat for a month or so until one sunny day in our not-too-sunny-summer, I took the envelope along with the poster board and glue out to the dining table on the deck.  As I enjoyed the afternoon, I started to sort and assemble this vision board.

As I sorted through the clippings for my vision board, it became clear to me that I was at that proverbial “fork in the road”. Long a fan of Robert Frost and his memorable lines in “The Road Not Taken”^[5], I could see that pictures and words that had caught my eye had done so for a reason. My finished board revolved around concepts that were the focus of my life now: healing and health, choosing and decision-making. These themes, emerging in the graphics and words of my board creation, were a wake-up call for me, one that I might not have recognized until too late—it was time to make a change. This revelation led me to name my finished work, a now board.^[6]

The Now Board  © 2009 Original Now Board and photo by Patricia A. McGoldrick 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.  ^[7]

The end.

• Patricia A. McGoldrick writes poems, essays and reviews about history, nature, books, events and people. Poems published online at Sleet; Irish American Post; Chapter And Verse; Cyclamens and Swords; League of Canadian Poets; http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides. Poems and essays published in these anthologies: Frost and Foliage; Voices Israel Anthology 2009; Ice: New Writing on Hockey; Love & Longing in the Near North; The Changing Image,2008,1994; The Grand Table Anthology. Patricia is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society (TOPS). http://pmpoetwriter.blogspot.com, http://sites.google.com/site/pmpoetwriter

1] Christine Kane at http://christinekane.com/blog/how-to-make-a-vision-board/.  By the way, an internet search will reveal multiple entries for vision boards; however, Ms. Kane’s site was the first revelation to me and it is, as I said, user-friendly.