Creativity on a small scale.

Helping, or trying to help, people find enjoyment and satisfaction in everyday necessary activities helps me find enjoyment and satisfaction in mine as well. There is no reason every activity needs to feel like your body and mind are swimming through mud. A lot of people work jobs they hate, that feel meaningless even when they are intended to give meaning to the worker and those they serve. There is a dependency built into our society that we must work to survive because survival is achieved by helping oneself more than helping others as a community.

Spending so much of the day moving through mud can lead one to believe that all the other necessary activities of life are drudgery as well. Being productive doesn’t get someone a dopamine hit at work, so why would it at home? The day is so exhausting, why even think about putting effort into anything besides doing nothing but feel the dopamine hits of scrolling? Where are there even options to be entertained other than the phone? If trying to discover new things has the possibility of failure defined by non-perfection, then why even try?

Small scale moments of craft, a trickle in the ocean of art, using nothing but the body and simple elements, and a few minutes, can build into mind widening experiences an inch at a time. Playing with eye makeup. Trying a new spice on the meal. Stealing a rock from the trail to put outside the doorstep as a reminder of the moment. Looking for new outfit combinations in the closet or thrift store. Low risk with low reward. But when we think of pennies as having no value, we are doomed to keep throwing them away. A penny, or the cost to make one these days, is worth more than one cent. The value of that small, like a penny, action is worth more that it looks on the outside. It can build, lead to small bits of satisfaction, small moments of desire for more, a dopamine hit like a scroll of the screen. The hit of artistic dopamine leading to more desire, and with a little time, or a little more, enjoyment and satisfaction can be found in small pieces of personal trials of expression.

It took failure to find joy. It took loss to find another place to fit in. It took an involuntary opportunity to find voice first in the head, and then years later on a screen. Art is not always something pleasing to the eye or hear. It can be pleasing to the heart, to the taste, to the smell. Art can be original creation, expression that pleases an audience of one at its core. Whether others like it is up to them. Art can be an avenue to also switch off the people pleasing desire of capitalism. Art can be everywhere, anywhere there can be creativity. Art is controlled by the artist. The artist can be any one of us.

I have expressed creativity and expression through food, modification of recipes, making of beer and wine, spice blends catered to me, vegetable gardening choices, and permaculture yard spaces for fruit. My son brought ceramics into our lives last summer. So now we both express ourselves through small sculpture and thrown pieces that build anticipation of the reward once the kiln door opens. Teaching, while partially my profession, but mostly my muse, gives me space to be creative and adapt content and concepts to various learning groups. All of it brought satisfaction and a desire for more because I was in control. In most cases the cost was low but the value higher. Every time that was spent being creative in little ways was time I looked forward to and gave me more hope throughout my mud swimming day.

We all have glasses on that prevent us from seeing all that is possible. Our life circumstances at any given moment, what is holding us back, our pasts, our obligations, our time limits and financial limits, can all close in and make the periphery hazy or black. We may be have to be very focused on the center to keep in a straight line. Can a small amount of creativity with low cost of our energies, time, person, work its way into the center a bit? Can we see its possibilities without taking our eyes off the lane in which we are driving in? When we are looking for a distraction, can we play with our food, our cloths, our environment as the scrolling replacement and hit of dopamine?

I opened the kiln door this morning to find this amazing cup I made just for me. It took minutes here and there over weeks, but it is here now and ready for coffee. Not everything in that kiln survived. A planter broke into pieces. But it was only for me and all of the low risk minutes spent curating it was still time that gave me satisfaction.

I hope all enjoy something small today, and tomorrow, and the next day. It will be worth more than the time and energy spent.