Inspired by Christopher Butler, I’m in the process of building a visual journalling practice into my days.

Why? Because lately I’ve been feeling that I am very fortunate to be in the position that, two decades ago, I might find myself in—namely, being paid to do interesting things with words. But I am also feeling that I don’t want to find myself, ten years or so hence, totally burned out on words because I haven’t done anything else.

Plus I’ve always had the urge to do some sort of visual creative work, particularly collage. So why not build a bit of casual visual play into the day?

Of course, there are downsides to inspiration. As his own efforts indicate, Christopher Butler is a very experienced designer and artist with a) a vastly more refined aesthetic sensibility and b) way prettier handwriting than mine, and c) he seems to have access to a far better grade of printed images to play with…

… but hey, I learned to write after being inspired by writers I thought were great, right? So I guess the trick here is to keep at it and trust that I’ll improve.

(The motivation should be easy to maintain, though: just spending half an hour going through old magazines and newspapers with a pair of scissors is surprisingly calming.)