“Taking time to appreciate three beautiful moments in your day instead of one can be extremely meaningful. In my mom’s famous words, let’s make the most of our time here.“

Paris Rosenthal

You know how algebra includes letters with numbers? (I was never good at algebra.) These equations require words. The idea comes from Paris Rosenthal’s book, Project 1. 2. 3. A Daily Creativity Journal for Expressing Yourself in Lists of Three. Write a list of three, prompts are provided, every day. It was a project she continued resulting from her late mother’s work, children’s author Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She posted her list at 1:23 p.m. every day and began the project on 12/3. Her intention was to post for 123 days, but due to her illness, she stopped on day 61.

Like all other things requiring daily discipline to maintain, I faltered and only completed a few pages. Picking up the book for inspiration this afternoon, I took a look at previous entires (I got the book in 2019) and found this one titled Creative Calculations with the following:

__________x__________ = __________

__________+__________ = __________

__________–__________ = __________

My responses on 11/7/19

ideas x solitude = creativity

pen + journal= story

reading – social media = ideas

Today’s responses:

stories + Spotify = podcast

shopping x teen – money = thrifting

(observation + blog) x (community + comments) = SOL

I don’t know if I’ll continue to go through the book every day. I most certainly won’t have my list completed by 1:23 p.m. because I’ll be bogged down with a million other things at that time. I can toss it in my bag. If I get to it, fine, if not, the world moves on. However, I plan to pop in and use it as needed. At the bottom of each page, there’s space to document the date, which my brain likes for keeping track.

Thank you, Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Paris, for brining this project to life, and helping us focus on gratitude and creativity with simple lists of three.