How I Decide What to Make Next...
Here’s a Venn diagram that I recently scratched down in my notebook. As you can see, I’m incapable of free-handing a circle. Entirely incapable. Please ignore that for a moment, if you don’t mind…
The diagram visualizes how I think about what to make. I ask myself these 2 questions:
First, “What gift do I want to give?” I wish this was the only question I need to ask, but it is best paired with another. I’ll get to that shortly. This question came to me years ago after reading a quote by Otto Rank: “The artist is one who wants to leave behind a gift.” It immediately felt right to me, down to my bones. Almost every new creative medium I delve into or big project I undertake is motivated by gifting energy. This has been the case as far back as I can remember. For example, I learned to “make a blanket” (sort of) for my 3rd grade teacher when she got pregnant. I learned to “make a dog toy” (which immediately broke) for my best friend’s new beagle in elementary school. I wrote a screenplay and learned to use a video camera in middle school to make “get well” videos for a friend after surgery. Eventually I made cards, songs, painting, poems, meals, events, lessons, etc. almost always in service of giving a gift to some specific person or group. When you’re a largely internal, self-reflective person with chronic fatigue (hi 👋) this outward turn with a dose of generosity is a great source of needed energy.
But there’s another part of Rank’s quote that is spot on. It speaks to the desire “to leave behind a gift.” Behind. The artist, generally, is always aware there will be a “behind.” This will all end at some point, which usually isn’t scary. It’s just part of the life cycle. What will we make that endures when we leave it behind? To me, a care package and a masterpiece painting have equal value in this equation. It is more about what feeling or experience your gift offers someone than the value of any physical object.
Ok, now onto that second question. “What gift can I give?” Again, I’m well-acquainted with the limitations of time, energy, and health. I have 100 ideas, at least, to every 1 that actually gets made. That is at times a maddening ratio, but I have decided that I prefer it to having no ideas at all and choose (mostly) to be grateful. That being said, I can’t physically make every gift I want to give. Especially not all at once. Perhaps you can relate. I think the last 2 years have brought so many of us to a necessary point of reflection about what our limits actually are and how we can live well within them.
So the discernment process of what to put my hands to at any given moment now includes an honest engagement with both of these questions. What gift do I want to give? What gift can I give? Where these answers overlap, as illustrated in the Venn diagram, is the set of coordinates I follow next.
Feel free to borrow this if it sounds helpful!
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