Silly little projects

Making space for us in a busy life

Those of you who follow my non-caregiver space endeavors online probably know that, well, I’m a little obsessive. Okay, anyone who was here for all those posts about Geel knows that, too. So, yes, I love coming up with an arbitrary set of rules for a project and carrying it way too far.

Sometimes, like with Geel, the obsession includes a research component. Part of why Geel is so fascinating to me is because I might have broken into a few abandoned buildings over the years and learned a little about their history. Many abandoned connected to the history of a previous generation’s way of managing mental health care, medical care, and poverty. Prior to Geel, I hadn’t pieced these various histories together into a coherent story.

Sometimes it’s not about research at all. Maybe a certain category of found items piques my interest and I snap a photo of it whenever I come across one — like discarded bananas and dead birds.¹ Maybe I jokingly declare I can eat nothing but tacos until I’ve eaten my literal weight in tacos and then give it a go.² Maybe I collect all the labels of my juice bottles and wallpaper a room with them. I also love a taste test; the more mundane the better. When I worked in an office and needed to look busy during weird gaps of time between meetings or while I was waiting for a critical piece of a project, I used to make silly reports and marketing materials to make my coworkers chuckle…or roll their eyes.

One of these proto-projects from the past few years has been finding artists who are or were caregivers. This collection is a bunch of scattered notes and photos of wall cards in galleries. Maybe one of these days I’ll do something with it.

It was only while reading Paul Lukas’s post on obsessive art that I thought of how it’s little projects like these that are accessible to people who do not have a moment of spare time. Things don’t need to be Big Serious Projects to be worthwhile.

People who do not have a moment of spare time are at huge risk for burnout, partly because when you’re focused on someone else’s needs around the clock you lose your own sense of identity. As much as there’s something to be said for the dissolution of the ego, losing your complex and layered identity is generally not a great experience. It can be about holding onto who we are, rather than honing a craft or capturing a moment.

I used to carry around watercolor pencils and paper, ready for inspiration to strike. I carried them around for well over a year before I finally gave them away, unused. While I couldn’t get myself to do something I saw as Art, even as casual as a little watercolor sketch, I had no problem taking cellphone photos and orchestrating little fluxus-esque events for my own amusement.

Fluxus is uniquely suited for caregivers, since it was a movement born out of a lack of resources and a lack of institutional support. Fluxus artists reframed all sorts of mundane aspects of life into performances. They made art with what they had. They had time, sure. Some of the busiest of us also have a lot of time, it’s just not free time. It’s time supervising someone, doing repetitive chores, getting from one place to another, and waiting. A lot of waiting.

Perhaps we can take this un-free time and use it for something that reaffirms our sense of self. Something that allows us to hone our eye, cultivate our creativity, and awaken our spirit. Perhaps we can discover the beguiling nature of overlooked patterns. Perhaps we can compose little songs about our most dreaded chores. Perhaps we can become Director of the Ministry of Silly Walks. Perhaps we can devise little games with ourselves to turn banal chores into an adventure. Perhaps we collect bread tags or colorful pebbles. Perhaps we can compose short stories about the people on the bus with us. We find different things intriguing, but all of us have something that intrigues us.

When there’s no time to set aside to do things for ourself, we have to turn whatever we can into something delightful. Even if only for a glimmer of a moment. We have to hold on to the things that make us us. There’s no need for a decade of therapy or a retreat to find ourselves. We just need to clear some tiny little spaces for our personality to come out and it will.

These little projects can be entirely in our minds. We can share them with friends. We can post it online for the world to see. What matters is that we keep it easy for us to do. A project doesn’t have to be a struggle; it can be something entirely silly. The sillier, the simpler, the better. Something we can integrate into the life we’re living.

1. I stopped posting these pictures of interesting trash to Instagram because so many of my friends complained, but plenty of other people have Instagram accounts dedicated to interesting trash.

2. Alas, I did not eat nothing but tacos until I’d eaten my literal weight in tacos.