My uncle had a new floor because a flood spoilt his old one. The insurers paid and he had a lot of slightly damp oak boards he had no use for (after he’d made a composter, some raised beds, a siege engine…) so he gave a pile to me. I made a nesting box for barn owls out of them. It wasn’t pretty, it didn’t win any prizes and it’s probably unsafe but I enjoyed making it. The owner of the land on which I mounted it enjoyed me making it, so did my uncle, so did visitors to the land and so did some barn owls. Making things is fun.
Why is making things fun?
1. Making things gives us a chance to focus on something pleasant and become free of the usual storm of jostling concerns that fizz our brains. By engaging fully in rewarding creative distraction, instead of going through the day filling our brain with the innumerable short circuits of problems unsolved and tasks incomplete, we allow our unconscious minds to do their problem solving work. We also get the opportunity to process our emotional constipation.
2. Making things allows us to be here and now.
“We spend so much of our modern life multi-tasking: driving and speaking on hands-free, working and listening to music, answering emails whilst talking to work colleagues. As a result we now excel at divided attention, but our ability to focus single-mindedly on the present moment has become compromised… Dr Rebecca Williams writing in BMC Summit 56 Winter 2009.
An indicator of our focus and presence in the moment is the degree to which we lose track of time. Whenever we are looking at our watch it shows we are focussed, at least in part, on the future. When we lose track of time it is because we are present in the moment, we are most in touch with reality. Maybe it was in part the time that many of the world’s greatest leaders spent being creative that allowed them their history changing perspective on the world and the moment: Winston Churchill the bricklayer, Jesus of Nazareth the carpenter, Mahatma Ghandi the spinner, Paul of Tarsus the tentmaker…
3. Making things often results in achievements that last; achievements that sit there and give us a sense of satisfaction each time we pass them.
4. Making things is good for your employer. There is evidence, and many highest earning companies are investing in this belief, that recreational creativity enhances a work force’s resourcefulness and motivation. Those wrestling gnomes you carved out of expanded polystyrene may well prove to be the single biggest contributor to your work’s jacked up end of year figures.
5. Making things allows us to fulfil our purpose as global stewards through recycling, restoration, redemption…
6. Making things enables us to enjoy being human. It’s one of the things we do better than any other species. In most of the things in which we invest our time, energy and resources we are embarrassingly outdone by other kinds of life. I was highly irritated by a slug the other day. I was already agitated: The climb was steep, low on protection opportunities and the only holds available were small pockets filled with a sexually active – slime producing – algae. There I was, half way up and going nowhere when, with deliberate casualness, a slug with absolutely no training or equipment glided past me. OK, so it humiliated me on a rock climb but change the event to a basic creative challenge like biscuit arranging and we all know who’d come out on top. No other organism is as genuinely creative as we are.
I reckon, recreationally speaking, it’s probably better to make things that don’t matter that much – especially if you aren’t very good at making them. A realistic appraisal of our talents at this stage is crucial. It may well turn out to be the difference between an afternoon’s jollity and a prolonged period of rows, claims forms, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Making things that do matter will involve pressures that may well undermine the fun element of making things and you get plenty of those already. Here are some questions that may help you decide whether what you’re making matters:
- How long will it take to make?
- If you’re making it for someone, do they have the patience necessary? You may pride yourself in being able to fit your own kitchen but what effect will the months / years of waiting for you to finish have on the other folk who use the kitchen?
- Will anyone be upset if you make a hash of it?
- What will it cost to make good your work when you make a hash of it?
- Will anyone be squashed, maimed, electrocuted, poisoned, drowned or worse if you don’t get it quite right?
- Will your neighbours be alarmed by the appearance of one in your garden?
- Does it affect you letting agreement?
- Does it require planning permission?
- Will it constitute a hazard to shipping or air traffic?
- What will the financial cost of the project be (include the price of your labour if you could be investing these in paid employment)?
- What pressure will making one put on other folk?
- Is dental work really as easy as you reckon it must be?
Why not try making something outside your usual field of responsibility or expertise?
Some questions that might just kindle your creative inferno:
- What have you enjoyed making in the past? Did you enjoy woodwork at school, art, needlework, mud pies?
- What’s in your ideas book / file?
- What could you make / write / cook as a gift to someone?
- What could you make out of that… (insert redundant article)? A friend laid his hands on a retired church pew. He turned it into a rather fetching bench around two walls of his kitchen.
- How could you outdo the kids?
- What could you use that (insert tool(in the literary sense)) for?
- What problem could you solve by exercising your creativity? A friend’s mum’s bird table was being raided by squirrels. His modification to its mountings involved elevation and grease. It worked. Delighted mum, satisfied son, amused spectators, frustrated / humiliated squirrels.
- What could you do to enhance your environment? Topiary, for example, can bring much joy to passers by. It can also be misinterpreted. One man’s carefully manicured privet sea cucumber is likely to be another man’s awkward conversation with his kids.
- What did you make before education and employment got the better of you?
- What could you design? An ideal residence, home extension, vehicle, garden, holiday, hairstyle, pizza…
- What have you noticed other people making that set your creative bits ringing?
- What could you modify – to make it more useful, beautiful, attractive to wildlife...?
- What’s in that skip?
Make something and get into the habit of making things.
Creating things can recreate us.
You are creative. Create.
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