On Creation

Simple words with simple materials.

Creation, hey? Kinda broad topic. What do you even mean?

Well, dear reader...may I call you dear reader?

Thanks.

Well, dear reader, I mean the act of making something. Creating things is a thing I've been pondering lately. Creating stuff has been a means of meditation, connection, and slowing the world down for me these days.

Being a human is a tricky business. There's the whole needing to eat, having a shelter, and maintaining social connections for protection from wild animals. It's easy to always feel overwhelmed and like everything is always happening at once and that you just can't do it all, what, why, how, <aggravated sounds> what do you mean?! <frustrated breathing>.

In reckoning with my own living, I've found that the act of creation has been one that brings a little bit of peace to the rigmarole of making it through the day. Stepping aside from the moment to moment survival pace that I've managed to find myself in and focusing in on something as small as writing and illustrating a word or carving into a little piece of wood with a sharp blade takes me out of myself enough to then return to surviving with a bit of my soul renewed. 

Hearts that I like to carve.

There is a peace that comes from focusing on the bringing into reality something that did not previously exist in its current state. When I allow my mind to look at what my hands are doing and channel all of the anxiety/hurriedness/despair/random emotion I'm feeling in the moment/anger into that activity it frees up the rest of myself to ponder why I was feeling that way in the first place. I have to focus on that project (finding the right color, not cutting myself, finding the right rhyme), so that part of my brain that pushes the survival buttons is occupied. Once that occurs, all of a sudden I find myself with some space to reflect on all the larger picture things. It's nice. 

Sticks and stones. No broken bones.

We create and destroy all of the time. It is part of life. We create beautiful delicious foods and then destroy it, macerating it into fuel for our body to go on creating and destroying other things. Humans have the power to build amazing architecture, fascinating conglomerations of words, and other works of beauty. We also have the power to destroy, through tools and words. Not all creation is good and not all destruction is bad. That's not what this is about, it's about the potential we have to do both. 

If you find yourself in the space that I do on a regular basis, that space of "NOPE, THIS IS DUMB AND EVERYTHING IS STUPID", give yourself permission to step away for a few minutes and create something. It can be as simple as taking a piece of paper and a pen and writing down a word, perhaps one with special meaning to you (for me, "awesome" works well, with it rhyming with my name and all). Challenge yourself to write it in the most creative way you can. How can you loop the letters? What shapes can you make with the word, each individual letter? Can you add color here? Did it just become a poem? What? Art? 

Don't get caught up in the BS of something being art or not. It's not about the finished product right now. It's about focusing on bringing something into reality. If your first try is not something you want to share with others, don't. It's for you. Also, forget perfection. If you're worried about it being perfect, know this, it won't be. You are human, I am also human, the flaws that we find in our work only prove that we are human. Be human and be okay with it. 

Thanks Ira.

This quote attributed to Ira Glass in the word art pictured here was something I came across when I was at a time in my life when I felt quite lost. I was working a job that had no nourishment for my soul and we were in some pretty low spots with a lot of political baloney circulating. At that time I didn't have the outlets that I have currently built up to help me get through the drudgery of earning a paycheck. I was also unable to get anything started in my creative self because I had the idea that I needed for it to be good before I could actually get going. I don't recall where I saw this first, probably Reddit or some such, but I put this image as my desktop background and returned to it often during my workday while switching between applications. It has permeated itself into all of the projects I find myself involved with to this day.

Making something perfect or even good isn't the point. The point is to make. To start. To begin. When you start, and then start again, and then again, each new start, each new beginning will grow from the previous. Lessons will be learned and you will get better. And even then, it doesn't matter if you ever show anyone else what you've made. All that matters is that you recognize within yourself the ability to do something. You are an amazing creature. You have the ability to use tools and render into reality something that you imagined first and then translated into the physical experience of the world we live in. That's really quite amazing. Awesome even. 

You've got this. 

Hugs.