If you’re not already famous and you decide to write a book, you have to work with absolutely no guarantee of success. Years pass, and you may still have nothing to show for your creative effort, nothing tangible, anyway—like an actual book. I used to be a photographer with a darkroom. I printed my own photographs and hand-colored some of them. By the end of the day, I had something to show for my effort, either a piece for a gallery or a commissioned portrait like the one below.
As the pandemic grinds on, I’m spending a lot of time on my laptop dreaming up characters for my next project, but I’m beset by a physical restlessness—not just to exercise, but to make something tangible like the photographs I used to spend so much time on. Something that’s not squirreled away in a digital file or that vanishes in a matter of minutes, like food. So many people are baking now. What are you doing? Making? If you feel restless like me, what quells it for you?
With people dying and the virus lurking in public places, I find myself wanting to bring new life to things. So I’m putting in plants around my tiny pond, replacing the ones the deer ate with ones I’m almost positive they won’t like. I’m sprucing up some outdoor furniture with paint and stenciling. Doing these things satisfies me deeply because I can see results even though nothing is finished yet. It’s about making patterns and creating order during a time of disorder. After working in the physical world this way, I can return to the blank page.
I’ve actually completed one hands-on project. After watching a bunch of tutorials on YouTube, I gave myself a haircut. This was the second time I’ve done this; the first was when I was six. All excited about my class picture the next day, I cut my bangs. My mother left them that way—they did, after all, match my front teeth.
My bangs matched my teeth
Decades later, a new look