The Creativity of Loading the Dishwasher

and sitting with the creativity of others

Hi friends,

Possibly you heard that my partner and I built a yurt from scratch this spring-summer-fall. The rumors are true, we did do that. We completed the raising about a week and a half ago (hurrah!) and now we are both: very tired, and, beginning to work our way through all of the deferred maintenance of our lives that has accumulated over the last 6+ months of yurt-work.

I’m left with conflicting feelings after finishing this humongous project, especially one that was so physically and intellectually challenging (the math, people, omg!). Many parts of the project didn’t feel objectively creative; though we were obviously creating something, the brain-soul work of invention and story-telling were–while not absent–much less present.

I’m very proud of what we’ve built together. It was good for our partnership and good for me. I feel more courageous, more capable, stronger. I’m excited to decorate the yurt, to spend time next to the fire with our neighboring friends, to soak in the brilliant, sustaining energy of the boreal forest… and I’m also a little resentful of the time it took away from my creative life of the present and recent past. How strange to feel resentful of a major life dream achieved! It’s all in there together!

I was putting off writing this week’s post because I felt embarrassed/ashamed that I hadn’t done more obviously-gloriously-magnificently-perfectly creative things to share with you in the last week. I’m catching up. Catching up on sleep, the dishes, the laundry, hanging gutters on the house, bagging leaves, working, thinking, being. I’ve been doing the work of being an adult alive in America!

I’d be the first one to tell you that creativity is present in everyone, accessible any time, in activities large and small. And so in my thinking this week I began to consider where creativity has lurked in the less obvious, less glamorous parts of my life:

—Loading the dishwasher (I prefer a very architectural style)
—Getting dressed
—Picking a route on our neighborhood dog walks
—Singing to my dog about how perfect, soft, and huge she is
—Drawing a dancing person on a paper plate at my favorite neighborhood pizza place
—Talking to a teenager
—Making up jokes for my nieces
—“Plating” oatmeal for my partner and sister in the mornings

CREATIVITY

It’s all in there together! After all, I’m trying to live a creative life, not just a creative substack post, or a creative client project, or a painting.

Another thing: it’s really special to bear witness to and enjoy the creative work of others. It’s everywhere, and during weeks when I feel like I’m more in maintenance mode than creation mode, it’s such a gift to be sustained by it.

In conclusion, I will proceed to write a ridiculous poem using a word from every other line of this post:

FRIENDS ARE
ACCUMULATED,
HUMONGOUS

PARTS
LESS—MORE

ENERGY DREAM

THINGS
BEING PRESENT
CREATIVITY
GETTING SOFT

TALKING OATMEAL, OR EVERYWHERE
RIDICULOUS.

With love,
Sara