I’m tired.
I’ve been writing for hours. I need a break.
I stop. I close the word doc, revealing my desktop. There’s a folder titled “Mindless, refreshing work” in the corner. I double-click it. Now I’m browsing hundreds of pictures, compelling, simple images I’ve saved over the years.
I’m looking for one to copy, to recreate.
I find one, a portrait of a young W.H. Auden. The picture is cut in half, the poet’s disembodied features—his eyes and nose and mouth—are floating in the space between the sides of his face:
I drag W.H. into Canva. I remake the image using a picture of my son. But I hate it. I hate seeing my small son this way. So I delete the file and start over, this time using my own boyhood portrait. I don’t mind taking myself apart:
Working this way feels good, easy. It’s mindless work, refreshing work. Because I’m not thinking. I’m not making decisions. In fact, I’m doing the opposite: I’m taking direction. I’m recreating the picture as well as I can with what I have. It’s not always good but, then, quality isn’t the point:
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“Sometimes, to get my brain working in a different way, I’d sit there and put LEGO together,” said Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park, writer of all 317 episodes. “Because you’ve got an instruction book and you just sit there and you do exactly what something else tells you to do,” he said. “And that’s just therapeutic.”
Taking direction is therapeutic, restful, because it removes the hazards of creativity: the uncertainty, the self-doubt. These are such heavy, tiring things.
And whether you build LEGO or paint by numbers or remake simple pictures you collect online, the benefits don’t change:
I feel accomplished, refreshed.
I’m not tired anymore. I close Canva and reopen the word doc.
I’m ready to make decisions again.
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