Scatterbrained

(materials: plaster, magazine clippings, glue, acrylic paint, stuffing, glitter, fake flowers, pony beads, leaves, cray pas, paper, pipe cleaners, pom poms, plastic crystals)

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How do you keep track of what is important to you? What do you forget?

For me, it can be a challenge to remember the little things, even if they matter to me. Birthdays, meetings, replying to emails, it can all be lost if I do not write it down immediately (and even when I do write it down, sometimes).

Through Scatterbrained, I have explored my experiences with having a less than organized mind. The plaster mold is of my own head and works as a “map” of how things that are important to remember, such as dates and times, for example, can often be lost or mixed up by me. It is a literal mind map of where my thoughts go, what can slip away, and how cloudy I often feel.

Especially with how incredibly busy my senior year has been (before social distancing, at least), I have been looking at ways to cope with the challenges of forgetfulness. This past semester, though, I realized that I had never taken the time to examine my thought processes as they are. To learn how to work with my mind, it is best to understand how it works in the first place. Like a dense forest, there is still much to explore and understand about the way I think, but this has been a powerful start. I invite you to come into my mind, take a look around, and notice the similarities and differences between you and me.

 

Hana McLinden