Dear client, I hope this project never ends.

But don’t get me wrong. It’s not about not delivering,it’s about facing the rupture of experimentation that happens along thecreative journey.

It’s not insecurity. This project is my way ofliving. Dramatic, I know.

Bruno Munari, in his book “Fantasia”,shows that creativity is born from our relationship with the world. Intelligenceorganizes our experiences to make sense of what we see. So the moreknowledge of the world we accumulate, the more repertoire we have to create.

That’s why I need to see the whole world before Ihand this project over to you.

And that’s why the process scares me. You canonly create something based on what you have learned from the world. Andthat thrills me too.

I know I’m enjoying the process when I realize Iwish it would last a little longer. Not because I’m afraid of running outof time, but because I’m afraid of wasting so many other cool things I stillhad left to discover.

And I proclaim, with pride:

“I don’t want what’s ready-made. And if italready exists, I want the chance to make it my own. And this search ofmine for the original is my sentence to eternal suffering.”

Starting the project doesn’t even hurt that much. Allit takes is discipline and commitment. But the middle stretch torturesme.

Because that’s where repertoire comes into conflictwith choice.

Intelligence, understood as the capacity to observe,deduce, verify, elaborate and investigate, does not guarantee that Iwill be creative; that’s not me talking, that’s Bruno. The bridge betweenintelligence and imagination is production. It’s making, making and making.Because my involvement is tied to the outcome of this project.

It’s in the making that the connections of memorycome together toward a creative manifestation. And, again, that’s not metalking; that’s Cecília Salles, in her book “O Gesto Inacabado”(The Unfinished Gesture).

I’m just the one who’s suffering. Because it’sprecisely in the making that everything starts to hurt.

On this journey of having to choose, discard or turndown something, there lives that uncertainty: “What if I let slip thevery thing that could be the right solution for that challenge?”

I’ll die if I make the wrong choice.

Then someone will say you shouldn’t take itpersonally. That cliché manifesto: “It’s not about you, it’s about your work,whose goal is to solve a business problem.”

Is it, though?

Is it really that robotic? Is it that simple toreduce the creative process to a functional answer? I’m human,come on. I care. Don’t you?

And what if I didn’t care? What was that night Iwent to bed with it weighing on my mind, sinking into the pillow? Or whenI’m not even asleep, just distracted, daydreaming about that blurry thingbetween my eyes and the screen of the planning meeting? Or even while I’mpooping? I’m not romanticizing it. I’m talking about involvement.

Cecília offers a more mature perspective. Forher, the work is not an end point, but the result of a path. Apath made of successive approximations.

Whether in the drawing, the text or the prompt I’m notquite sure how to write, trying to make tangible that blurry thing thatlooks beautiful in the darkness behind my closed eyes. Every attempt andapproach brings me closer to what I believe is my “masterpiece”.A long path of doubts, adjustments, certainties, small wins andapproximations.

What we call a project, then, is not an object but a trajectory.This isn’t just work: it’s my life being taken hostage by the process.

And, in this Stockholm syndrome, I don’t wantthe easy solution, no way. I want to fall in love with the perfectsolution, made with my own hands. I want to make it for real. And ifstarting is the first step toward failure, then let ME be the one makingmistakes, all the way to the end. And don’t come at me with that digitalthing putting em dashes or extra fingers where I didn’t ask for them.

Because knowledge of the world is not just passiveaccumulation; it is built in practice, in experimentation, in therelationship with the material, with others and with the problem. Perception,in this sense, becomes an active instrument: it is through perceptionthat the “artist” collects, organizes and transformsinformation into language.

And when my thumb can’t take any more endless scrollingthrough a vertical feed of references that make no sense at all for myproject, when scribbles, handfuls of words, collages and fragmentsbecome more interesting than ready-made answers, that’s when I realize I’mstarting to grasp the “truth” of it all.

I could even think: “I’ll just give in to thefirst idea. At least I’ll stop suffering.”

But I care. And if I care, I keep testing,observing, failing again. All the way to the end.

Even with no guarantee. Knowing that mistakes arepart of the trajectory, I want to go deeper, because I am committedto making something that has no shape yet, but “is there”, in that hazyzone between my eyes and the world, almost coming into focus.

The process then becomes a living system of exchange:between the world and the individual, between repertoire and decision,between doubt and form.

And just when I start to enjoy this dance, the deadlinecomes whispering in my ear. “Give me one more day,” I ask. “Ortwo.”

But it’s due tomorrow.

And I wanted to show more. I wanted to do a stripteaseof my idea, to seduce you with my Keynote, my “deck”, my PPTor my Figma Slides.

Give me another half day?

I bargain.

At least one more afternoon? I beg.

I want to polish it a tiny bit more before thepresentation. Because I know it’s not ready yet.

“It answers the brief,” they’ll say. Butwhat about that crowd of judges inside my brain, shouting out loud: “Youhaven’t tried EVERYTHING yet.”

And maybe I never will. Maybe that’s the point.

The creative process inevitably carries a senseof incompleteness. There will always be something left out, an unexploredpossibility, an idea that never got to exist.

And that’s what scares me, again. But it’s alsowhat thrills me.

Because when something finally clicks into place,even if only for now, in an instant, everything makes sense. And, for abrief second, chaos falls into order and I feel inspired.

Oh yes, inspiration exists. But, to this day,I’ve only found it while working. And every piece of “feedback”is, for me, my incredible opportunity to try out those other ideas I haven’thad yet.