They accumulate in the corners of our minds and homes: skills, experiences, dog-eared books, fragments of inspiration. What if these things aren’t random clutter, but whispers of something more significant taking shape. Have you ever felt that familiar midlife restlessness, the sense that you’re circling something essential, gathering random pieces and things that seem disconnected? Yet, somehow they feel significant to your evolving identity. We collect bits and pieces along the way in hopes that they might lead to that next right thing. That ONE best thing, perfect spark, or idea.

While sewing or working on projects in my cozy yellow chair, legs crossed and my dog in her bed at my feet, I wondered how all of the things I had collected fit together. I have been collecting for some time in midlife. I know that my path forward still has holes in it that need to be filled by exploration, failure, and experimentation. But before I move on to try something new, I often pause to try to make connections within what I have curated up to this point.

I am a collector by nature, so that is the easy part. As a former elementary teacher (who now teaches education majors at the university), I keep almost everything in case I find some unique or original use for an item in my teaching or personal practices. Teachers are savvy and resourceful, and tend to find value in everything (as evidenced by the number of boxes stored in our basements).

My collections are made more complicated and messy by the fact that I have been a “dabbler” for some time. This means I have a wide selection of craft and art materials at the ready should I have a whim to knit, sew, or take up lino printing at any given moment. But it also means I have physically and mentally collected ideas, practices, and “sparks” of interest that seem to swirl around with no apparent purpose. This can feel overwhelming and contribute to my decision fatigue. But the antidote is to take time and pause. To review what I have collected and discern what is needed, wanted, or ready to let go of.

But, because I want to believe that everything has a purpose and use, I have a hard time letting things go. Envision a parking lot with many spots and cars parked. The parked cars are thoughts and ideas I have collected, parked in a semi-permanent way, waiting to move and have purpose. If left like this, my mind would look like vast seas of parking lots, partially filled, waiting for purpose.

But I find pausing to process ideas helps me link them. For me, that pausing is photo journaling. I take a photograph of something that catches me, write about what it brings up, then go back through what I wrote and circle the words that hold the most weight. Photo, journal, harvest. The harvest is where the connections start to show up, where what looked like a parked car turns out to be carrying something I hadn’t yet named.

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When we engage in this practice, it does more than just occupy our hands. Neuroscience shows us that creative expression creates unexpected neural connections, mapping pathways between what we thought were disconnected regions of thought. Art practices that draw multiple emotions within us (awe, wonder, surprise, sadness, fear) become salient, which rewires neural pathways. This rewiring is what allows us to force fit seemingly unrelated ideas together: connecting those parked cars that would otherwise remain static in distant lots of our mind.

Building awareness of what you like or don’t like and better understanding how you are changed, inspired, or influenced through artistic practices creates opportunities for you to apply your own perceptual preferences to any area in your life. That awareness is what I’d call informed discernment: the ability to recognize which forced connections spark new possibilities and which ones simply don’t hold. My former colleague would call this intentional practice of force fitting a sort of catalyst for innovation; where connections emerge not because they naturally belong together, but because we actively choose to examine them side by side.

As midlife women, we are at this unique intersection of collected experience, wisdom, and future potential. Our collections of experiences, ideas, materials, and dreams, aren’t random. They’re the raw materials waiting to be connected in ways only we can envision. And the reality is, we are not yet done collecting. Entering this second half of life isn’t about simply organizing what we’ve already gathered. It’s about continued exploration, bold experimentation, and “auditioning” of new elements that might become the catalyst for what Julia Cameron calls “synchronicity.”

Maybe the question isn’t whether things will force fit or fall into place, but rather: what if our creative practices are the very tools that reveal connections we’ve been blind to? That, for me, is what sits at the heart of photo journaling. Through these deliberate acts of artistic expression or creation, we access deeper layers of understanding. We shed light on connections that have been quietly forming beneath our conscious awareness, waiting for the right moment and medium through which to reveal themselves. Quiet alchemy.

I invite you to consider your own collections. What are you holding on to that seems disconnected from your current path? Have you allowed yourself the space to explore how these pieces might connect in unexpected ways?

Walking this journey with you,

Dr. Kerri Fair, EdD

P.S. If something in this is sitting with you and you want to try photo journaling for yourself, my free guide Who Am I Now? offers six prompts built around the question of who you become when the roles that have defined you start to shift.