Triple Virgo.

Confessions of a compulsive.

Perhaps it started with crayons or colored pencils, arranging them in the box. Whites, then yellows, oranges, reds, and then what? Blues or purples? No browns, and then the greens, the blues, the purples, the grays and blacks. Perfect.

Most kids just stuffed the colors nilly-willy into the box or left them lying on the table. For me, arranging always provided a certain satisfaction.

The same with my bookshelves: arranging books by author, then again by title, by subject, by spine color, by height. Then I could lie in bed and gaze upon the orderliness before me.

I think that’s the reason I loved collecting stamps. Arranging all of the Queen Elizabeth II profiles by denomination or by color. And the same with the Francisco Franco portrait series. Variations on themes.

And why I like discovering an author and reading every book they’ve written, usually in order of publication.

Following the instructions for Ikea furniture and turning a pile of random planks into a bookshelf. Or organizing computer files so they sit in the right folders and have the right names. Building databases. Making swatches of all my new watercolors. Labeling each of my sketchbooks and the drawers of my art supply cabinet.

I like to put my activities into my calendar and record them in my journal at the end of each day. A journal I have filled for 1,327 consecutive days without fail.

I like to set my own schedules and deadlines. I like to finish a project long before I feel the cold constricting grasp of the due date around my throat. I call it “pre-crastination,” this need to get it done before it’s expected.

So what is this about? This desire for completism and order and neatness?

I normally think of myself as a person who eschews rules and regulations. Who revolts against mandates imposed by others. I pushed back against client mandates and company policy and due dates throughout my advertising career. I wanted to go my own way and yet…

Am I somewhere on the spectrum? Aren’t we all? Is it an anal compulsion baked into my psychology? Perhaps. Is it because I’m a triple Virgo, the stars aligning to make me this way?

True, I was born under certain stars, but I was also born into a certain kind of family, one that brought me a lot of chaos and very little predictability. Between my mother, my father, my first and second stepfathers, my grandparents, I lived under changing rules, changing styles, changing needs, changing demands, changing houses, changing cultures, changing countries. I went to a dozen and a half schools in four countries before I was twelve.

None of which was within my control at all. But my bookshelf was.

Creativity requires chaos. We need ideas and inspirations to be free-floating and bumping up against each other.

But there have to be constraints as well. If my environment is chaotic and so is my creative project, my brain will hit a system overload, a form of anxiety that makes me feel powerless and incapable of steering the idea to completion.

When things are ordered—when I know where my supplies are, when my schedule is set, when the crayons are arranged—my brain doesn’t have to work so hard just to exist in the world. It’s not scanning for threats or frantically hunting for the thing I need. That energy gets saved for making.

My brain needs to operate within a certain range of stimulation. If my environment is inert, my brain has nothing to play with. But if everything is on fire, I get overwhelmed and retreat.

But this is not a pathological condition. I’m capable of doing work and operating even in really difficult situations. I did it when I was a kid, and I did it in some extremely tumultuous advertising agencies run by insane people.

But it’s not optimal.

I’ve turned my childhood coping mechanism into a professional-grade tool.

The life I lead now has a lot of structure, so my imagination has a scaffold for my creative ideas. I write on certain days. I make videos on certain days. I do demonstrations and livestreams on other days.

I know what to expect from my day, structure-wise, but all is not rigid and unyielding. When I sit down at the keyboard or pick up my pen, I am travelling on a well-maintained road that I can ride in all directions.

My imagination has become superbly well-trained. It’s like my pugs when I take them for a walk. They know we’re here to do business.

I can sit down and write this essay at 8:30 on a Monday morning and get it done on schedule because I’ve engineered this structure and place of safety, productivity, and predictability. My imagination knows it’s in the right environment to safely generate ideas. It’s ready to perform.

When I open my pencil box, and I’m greeted by that perfect rainbow, it means the storm has passed and the time for making has begun.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. One of my obsessions is using a dip pen.  And I want to infect you with it. I'm putting together a new live online workshop on March 7th—three hours diving into dip pens, starting with the basics and ending up with several beautiful pieces of finished art. If you want to join me for a really fun Saturday, click here to learn more.