Your weird, small projects

The comments section that followed last week’s newsletter on weird, small projects was among my favorite ever. If you missed it, this was the gist:

In caring for a little piece of earth, one rejects the idea that scale is all that matters, or that all worthwhile labor is paid labor. One creates unruly beauty for its own sake. In creating small, weird projects, one reclaims one’s energy away from destruction, plays like a wise child, sheds illusions of perfection. One finds an outlet for the unspoken and unbranded.

You are doing such (un)remarkable, tender, beautiful things and reading about them has brought me such delight.

Both big piles of chopped wood and standing ovations always make me cry. True story.

Check it:

• In my own life - a good loaf of sourdough bread (even before the pandemic), a well chopped pile of wood for the woodstove, the patient collecting of coffee mugs from places I love, listening to quirky radio programs from Nova Scotia, the refinishing of an antique table, and an occasional reflective piece on social media are a few of the things that keep me alive and joyful amidst the pain, confusion, anger and war all around.

• In the past month I’ve started to film myself doing house renovation/little building projects and putting them on YouTube. Mainly just my family watches them. It sounds (and is) pointless to stay up late after my daughter is asleep in order to spend hours and hours editing and putting together the videos, and the whole thing definitely feels weird to focus on while there is so much suffering going on. That said, it also has provided me with a way I can channel creativity and excess energy into building/making things and then being able to share and explain them to others, and it's been strangely profound in how much it has shifted my overall mental state and capacity to deal with the rest of the world.

• Recently, I started dressing up in glamorous outfits and taking photographs. My friend is an aspiring photographer and I am an aspiring stylist (and that’s my weird little project because it’s not my daytime job) and so this has been a collaborative effort. It’s equal parts a healthy distraction from pain and a way to face it. Our outfits/photographs/backdrops have meaning to us. They allow us to make sense of all that has happened.

• This struck me today, and while I don’t normally comment, I had to speak to truth. I am retired, and I fill my day with painting pictures and cross stitch, flowers, and tending to friends who reach out with their fears and concern over the state of our world. I also watch videos of my grandchildren that my daughter sends on a regular basis. Are the weird, maybe - but I am tending to me need for meditation. The stroke of the brush, the up and down of the needle, are very ZEN-like, and they calm my soul. That is the opposite of violence - it keeps me from throwing something at the television, and lifts me from depressive thoughts.

• I am knitting it for a little baby born at 27 weeks, airlifted to Seattle Children's NICU and not returned to “her” hospital with hopes of going home in the coming weeks. Each stitch is done with hope for her, a little prayer for her and a wish that she will grow up to be a wonderful and giving person. Creativity puts peace and joy in my heart ... even when the world is falling apart!

• During the first winter of Covid I painted stones that represent my house, my neighbors’ homes, and the village down the road. A dozen or so rocks in a circle on my dinette table waited to be placed outside when spring came.

• Even with a deadline looming, I had to drop everything to hold a funeral for a spider that died. It happened during my almost-nine-year-old son’s recess period at our local neighborhood school. 

• A hearty amen to your Goodwill ventures. Mine have gone decidedly in a punk direction which I’m trying to pull off in an authentic way at 47 years old, ha. :) (I also shaved half my head? Yikes. But I love it.) 

Don’t stop. Not ever.

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Also, this is neither weird, nor small, but reader, dear friend, and artist Jen Bloomer made this gorgeous thing inspired by Learning in Public. You can buy a print and all proceeds benefit Integrated Schools, an organization supporting parents who are intentionally, humbly, and joyfully integrated our nation’s neighborhood public schools. Win-win-win.