A pad of sticky notes with a pen on top in front of the corner of a desk with a pile of mail and sticky notes

My end-of-PhD sticky note pile.

There’ve been many moments over the past few months when I’ve felt haunted by the things I would rather be doing. An idea floats by—something that in a normal time I’d read about that night, or spend a Saturday making—but that found me totally occupied. I tried batting them away at first, but they’d come back. It was distracting and kind of distressing. It felt like they were my subconscious forcing me to consider that, if I couldn’t engage with what my mind actually thought was interesting, maybe I was doing something wrong.

Then I realized that they were only coming back because they didn’t want to be forgotten. So I started writing them down, as soon as they’d arrive, one to a sticky note. And they stopped coming back. I got a quiet my mind and a physical manifestation of what I was working toward. There’s probably a post about this idea somewhere on 43folders, but I’m writing this anyway in case it finds someone else with the same problem.

At this point I don’t remember much of what’s in the pile (it’s about a pad and a half, plus some mail I didn’t have the bandwidth the deal with), and I’ve spent my first couple unoccupied days cleaning my apartment instead of looking through them. But it worked. I’m here, and they’re there, ready for tomorrow.