All good designs starts with inspiration. My design projects are fed by this spark. That spark is the thing that moves you emotionally.
Interior Design is a highly emotional process. We want to lean into those emotions. I want to know what gives you butterflies and alternatively what gives you that ICK feeling. I want create that "north star" that jumping off point the allows all of the decisions to flow together.
Think of it this way, if someone was to ask you what kind of birthday cake you wanted, you would choose based on your gut, your desire, or perhaps what you're craving. The other decisions around the cake would evolve easier (i.e frosting type, filling, tiered? cherry on-top?) when you know what kind of cake is being created.
This is basically what I want us to do. I don't want to start talking about the frosting, until we know what kind of cake we're baking together. We need to go back to the basics and find that spark that we will center our design on.