this started off as a “behind the scenes” note for a project which i haven’t even finished, but now it will just continue as it’s own thing because this is all i will center my life around for now, yay!
2026 UPDATE: Well… it did center my life for some amount of time. And then it fizzled. As things do, thanks to the ADHD brain. I still did push myself out of the comfort zone, and eventually just did things without “choosing” a note.
What is an Avoidance Journey
what is this even about you may ask!
great question. I’ve been following this lovely lady – Jen Butler @jenbutlersays – who I feel like I relate to in a lot of ways. I love how honest and authentic she is, even about the times she feels awful about it (me too, except, I’m not even as far as she is)
one of my favorite things that she does is the Avoidance Journey series. Long story short, the setup is that she decided that she can’t keep avoiding doing tasks that could get her closer to her dreams, so she put down 30(!) tasks and covered them up with numbers, asked her friends/family to pick numbers for her, and then documenting herself doing the tasks.
Why I also need to do an avoidance journey
i’ve been doing a lot of musing recently due to an experience I had watching a local talk from a book designer… I realized he was living my dream. Unfortunately, I knew that reaching his position wouldn’t be an easy task.
Since then I have been racking my brain over it. I know I should be doing more, but a lot of it is stuff I would much much rather not (looking at you, networking and socializing and making connections). But I have to.
Following Jen on her journey has been such an inspiring thing for me, (also shoutout to Volume Control, her amazing book) so as she recently finished her own and made a video with her reflections, conveniently after my recent realization to realize my dreams, I keep thinking to myself that I gotta do one myself.
How it will work
Ok, unlike Jen, I am NOT doing 30 tasks. That’s a whole LOT. I would have to really expand the horizons. After some thinking, I decided to do 12. It seemed like a reasonable enough number….
and that is as far as I have gone so far.
I plan to document the journey on video and upload to my YouTube as shorts, as well. And I hope that my friends and family pick the numbers I want to do the most rather than the least, but I guess it will be out of my hands.
Oh Well.
Mayhaps in the future this project will turn into it’s own little sub-section! I could see that happening, also.
TLDR in a video format
How it’s going
Here’s the list of things I have done thus far… but honestly. I am not keeping up very much with this. Why? Because a lot of these… I started doing by themselves. Eventually. Some have very detailed pages on what’s what, while some will be. To The Point.
- LinkedIn Plans
- seek mentorship
- socialize for collaborations
- ???
- ???
- creative direct a project
- brainstorm digital garden notes
- ???
- make a long-form video
- organize shelf
- digital cleaning (zine)
- ???