How to fold socks
This week’s question comes to us from Gina Trapani:
How do you think about your creative practice? What are the most important parts of it?
Folding socks.
Seriously. I love folding socks. Every couple of weeks, usually on Sunday, I have my morning coffee, grab my hamper, and go through my laundry to sort it. Once I’ve washed and dried my socks I dump them all onto the couch, and dial up something calming on the TV. (Grand Designs, Bake-Off, and Project Runway are good sock-folding shows.) Then I sit there folding socks. First I pull all the striped socks out of the pile, give them a healthy stretch, match them up, fold them in thirds, and make little stacks on the coffee table. Then I move on to the polka dot socks, then the solids by color, etc, etc, until all the socks are folded. At which point I pause the TV—usually while Kevin is just slightly breaking the fourth with a smirk as a homeowner says they’re going to manage the project themselves—and slowly carry all of the folded socks to the sock drawer where they are arranged in very ordered rows so that the folds point downward, to maximize the amount of visible pattern for easier choosing. I should also note that I have as many socks as will fit in the sock drawer, and should one of them give up the ghost I make a mental note that I can be on the lookout for a new pair, should I come across a good one.
What does this have to do with my creative practice? Everything. At least inasmuch as I might have something called a “creative practice,” which I probably do, the term just leaves me slightly itchy, which is my own hang-up. But also nothing, which ends up being everything.
I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that I don’t really make a strong distinction between things in my life that are part of a creative practice and things in my life that are outside of a creative practice. While also trying very hard not to be one of those annoying people who has opinions about how to make coffee. I mean, I have them. I just don’t feel like I need to exhaust everyone around me by constantly voicing them. Make your coffee how you like.
By default I am an anxious person. I also suffer intermittent bouts of depression, which at the moment—knock on wood—I’m handling, thank you. But one of the things that happens when I start going down that slide into depression is that I can’t differentiate between the size and importance of things. For example, I’ll be managing to hold my shit together while my country turns into a fascist hellhole, but then I’ll run out of dish soap and have to make an emergency call to my therapist. Not because the little things are more important than the big things. I objectively know they’re not! But the chemicals in my brain do an amazing job of convincing me that doesn’t matter. In fact, this is one of the checkpoints my therapist and I have put in place to let me know whether I’m sliding into depression. Are big things big? Are small things small? Can you tell the difference?
So I take care of the small things. Every morning I wake up and wash the dishes. I cannot leave the house unless the sink is clean. And every morning, before I leave the house, I stare at that sink and I think to myself “the sink is clean.” And as I grab a t-shirt from the IKEA cubbyhole I look at all the other t-shirts and realize that they’re all folded to the same size and I think to myself “the t-shirts are in order.” Then I head over to the sock drawer, look over all my sock possibilities, and pick out the pair I want, while thinking to myself “the socks are organized.” Does this mean my home is all amazingly organized? Far from it, it’s a maximalist circus tent decorated by people raised by wolves. But it means I’ve set up enough reminders for myself, as I move through my morning routine, that when I walk out the door I have reminders that I’ve taken care of the small things. I’ve recognized them as small things, while also recognizing the importance of small things. If I do nothing else of value that day, I’ve at least done this.
This way, when I walk out the door, into the land of bigger things, I’m ready to do those. I’m ready to recognize them as bigger things, and tackle them with the care that bigger things require. And should I fail, which is a normal part of the whole being human thing, I’ll come home and stare at the sock drawer for a while and it kind of resets me.
When I think of having a “creative practice,” again getting slightly itchy, I think about all the stuff that I get to do every day. Big things and small things. Is writing this newsletter part of that creative practice? Yes, but so are doing workshops, and the occasional client project, and making sure that there’s milk in the fridge, and taking out the recycling. Does it feel great to solve a big design problem? Yes, but it also feels great to rewire the speakers, or put away all the records I listened to last night, or make sure the dog has snacks. Is this painting I’m working on important to me? Yes, but so is repainting the living room. I really enjoyed doing that. Erika and I sit in that room every night and I think to myself “I’ve made a nice place for us to hang out.” It’s also a great room to fold socks in. My mental health requires that I understand the difference between small things and big things, but it allows me to love them both. Which I do.
This is about the interconnectedness of all things. The importance of all things, be they big or be they small. Everything has an effect on everything else. Everything in your life is related to everything else. A perfect peach can lead to five pages of good writing. Leaving the house without cleaning the sink can lead to a day of doing shitty design.
Being a good listener also means listening to your own brain. Even if it’s fighting you.
I’m not good at compartmentalizing. An issue I’m having at work doesn’t usually get solved at work. It gets solved during a bike ride. A sentence I’m struggling to find will pop into my head while I’m taking out the trash. So I’m happy to let it all swim around in there and come out when it comes out. If I get stuck writing, I usually solve it by going to do something else. Likewise, if I’m in the middle of writing and I suddenly remember that the back porch needs sweeping, I’ll get up and sweep the back porch.
This all makes me a terrible employee, which is why I stopped trying to be a good employee. It was never going to happen.
I’ve been doing this newsletter for over a year. I used to sit down, bang it out, and publish it. (The typos will confirm this.) Then on my bike ride home I’d think of all the things I wished I’d added. Sometimes I’d get home and add those things to the web version, which meant the people reading the email weren’t seeing the newest version. After doing this too many times it finally occurred to me that I should build the bike ride into the writing process. So now I start the newsletter on Wednesday afternoon, get it close to finished, and then ride home. As I’m riding, the newsletter starts swimming around in my head and realigning itself in strange new ways that just wouldn’t happen if I was staring at a Google doc. No matter how hard I’d try to focus. A few weeks ago, I had to pull over three times to jot down notes as things came to me. When I get home, I add in all the stuff that came to me during the bike ride. Then I publish it the next day. (With even more typos!)
So as much as it might make me itchy to admit, I guess I do have a creative practice. Everyone does. It’s how we make our way through the world. Listening to what our brains might need from us. Taking care of little things and big things, while appreciating the love and attention that small things, big things, and in-between things need. Allowing our ideas to interact with the world, as well as letting them race up a hill or make their way through city traffic. Letting them take naps. Throwing them for your dogs to fetch and seeing what they look like when they come back.
Take your ideas for bike rides. Take your troubles for a walk. Hop on a train and take your big design problem to the beach, let it breathe the salty air. Let it get some sun. Let it be part of the world.
We’ve had too many ideas that attempt to take over—or disrupt—the world. It’d be nice to have some that want to be part of it.
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🤖 Are you raising a boy? I’ve been friends with Chris Pepper for a long time. He’s a health teacher in the San Francisco school district and he’s legit good at it! He and Joanna Schroeder have written a great book called Talk to Your Boys.
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