Moon Lists makes analog tools, prompts conversations, and shares resources to inspire new ideas, to help reshape the present, & to (re)define your own perspective…

This project started as a better way to ask questions — the realization of repeating a familiar script without updating our answers. (i.e.: You run into a friend you haven’t seen in awhile. ‘What’s been going on?’ they ask. You reply, ‘Just work,’ or ‘Not too much,’ or ‘[insert arbitrarily relatable milestone]’.

Moon Lists email subscribers receive 2-3 emails per month.

One email is always a set of unique prompts written for the present moment or surrounding a theme.

How to use the prompts:

Read through the list of monthly prompts while thinking back to the last month or last couple weeks. Examples: Prompts for Retrograde Season | Prompts for Willful Delusion | Prompts for Endings & Beginnings

Pair the prompts with a journal and respond on your own; OR bring the list of questions to dinner with a friend; OR just read and move on. There’s no wrong way to use these prompts (…other than never beginning at all).

But Why?

Journaling can synthesize our idea of who we appear (or aspire) to be and who we actually are. It acts as a hinge between the abstract ideas of “identity” versus the ways we actually spend time, think, and arrange our lives. In other words, the things you pay attention to are what you become.

Self-reflection doesn’t need to be a study in navel gazing, not overly academic, saccharine, nor woo woo. It’s about finding absurdity and lightness amid the randomness of life; breaking through creative or emotional roadblocks; and/or curating a mix of references that are wholly your own. 

This kind of journaling can be helpful for:

• Distilling everyday drivel.

• Clarifying what invites seriousness versus what can be ignored.

• Recognizing patterns.

• Tending to your obsessions.

• Creating an abstract portrait of the present.

• Taking an inventory of your attention.

• Starting something new; renewing interest in something familiar. 

• More interesting conversations.

• Seeing the forest, not just the trees, so to speak. 

• Reorienting. 

• Recalling.

• Reconnecting.

• Thinking more clearly.

• Metabolizing your experience.

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller

Workbooks:

Moon Lists also makes more all-encompassing analog and digital workbooks—these are all undated with prompts that span 12-18 months, including both monthly prompts & smaller weekly list-making ideas.

Analog—
The second edition of the analog Moon Lists workbook (12 undated months of prompts, list-making, and space to write) may be purchased here.

Digital—
For traveling, pairing with your own blank notebook of choice, and/or instant gratification, the digital workbook contains its own sets of prompts (different from the print version). Download here.

Special Projects:

From time to time Moon Lists also makes special collaborative projects, objects, or highly limited edition notebooks.

But I thought this was about the Moon:

If you are intently looking for prompts that relate to the moon cycles or any form of lunar wisdom…sorry.

The moon is a metaphor; it’s a reminder of perspective, of vantage, flipping the narrative…plus a dash of humility in realizing our own relative insignificance.

Consider the Overview Effect, or a cognitive shift in awareness reported frequently by astronauts during spaceflight, often caused by seeing the Earth from outer space:

“It is the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, ‘hanging in the void,’ shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, national boundaries vanish. The conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this “pale blue dot” becomes both obvious and imperative.” 
—Ian O’Neill, “The Human Brain in Space: Euphoria and the Overview Effect.”

ETC:

More about Moon Lists may be accessed here.

You may follow on Instagram here.

Moon Lists is founded by Leigh Patterson & is the personal project of LUCCA, a studio for creative & editorial direction