It goes like this: I thrifted some beautiful mid-century modern teacups, with gorgeous black-and-white graphic flowers. I had spied them in Value Village, where they had been priced at thirty dollars for a set of eight cups and saucers. Thirty dollars! At Value Village! (In this economy!) But I picked them up because they were quite pretty, and the manufacturers' stamp indicated actual vintage rather than HomeSense knock-offs. When I looked them up online, it seemed like they were a pretty popular item (a single pair of cups and saucers was selling on Etsy for sixty bucks), and so I put them into my cart, not wholly sold on the purchase but unwilling to get scooped while I was still in the store. I finally committed to them when I pictured my family sitting around my table on a Christmas brunch, drinking coffee and tea from these little mugs. Even though I don't even know what version of my family I bought them for—it's certainly not my current iteration, in seemingly constant turmoil—it seemed like maybe the mugs would help manifest the family, or at least it couldn't hurt.
Anyway, of course these cups and saucers had been sitting on my kitchen counter for six weeks while I hemmed and hawed about where to actually put them. If I tucked them away on the "good china" shelf, I would never use them; at the same time, I knew they wouldn't be in regular rotation, because they hold about two-thirds of a cup of liquid and are pretty silly as an everyday drinking vessel.
Related: this week, my mom came and helped me freshen up my back room. Not quite a mudroom, but definitely not a living room, it serves as a storage zone/erstwhile potting shed/place to store bikes/plant hanging facility. My mom took the lead on redoing the flooring (laying laminate over old vinyl) and painting (scuffed white walls to a pinky terracotta). I mostly "helped" by repeatedly making incorrect cuts and, at one point, laying several laminate boards over top of a pencil I had left on the floor. I often consider myself handy, but I was definitely not on my game this week. But the job is 90% done, and it looks great, and I think I can mostly finish it myself.
It was while this big job was underway that I decided to finally just hang the teacups. I went and got hooks and I got out my cordless drill and I spent ten minutes drilling, and then I hung up my teacups and they looked great. The job was done! The small job was done. The big job, of course, is not done, but we're getting closer.
I don't usually half-ass things. I have four regular clients, I serve on my library's board, I help organize community events, I'm solo parenting half the time, and I have a multitude of hobbies, from daily Worldle to this very blog to knitting to gardening to making jewellery. My creative to-do list currently includes several major projects, like refinishing my dining-room table and learning how to make punch-needle textiles. I like big, bold challenges. I like creative approaches and systems-based solutions. I sound like an insufferable LinkedIn profile, but these are true things about me: I like to do and make.
But this year, I find myself struggling with the bigger projects. Maybe not even just this year: if I'm honest, the last few years have often been a balancing act where things like "a clean house" or "an interesting meal" goes by the wayside, so the chances of me taking on a big challenging haven't-done-it-before project are pretty slim. Things have been so busy and so different, and since my separation, even more so. I've been pretty in my head about it all, too: a lot of anxiety, a lot of time spent stretched out on the floor, waiting to feel better.
But maybe I'm taking the wrong approach. Maybe I need to focus less on the big stuff and more on the little stuff. I know the sense of satisfaction that comes from a large project, but I also know that they can be kind of...interminable? Sometimes there's no sense of being done on a large project. There's always a bit more to finish, a few things to polish up. A small job? That has a start and an end. There's a moment where there is nothing else to do, and the brain sort of goes "ahhhh" like a sigh. It's part of the reason I like knitting socks, or hanging framed art, or even doing unloading the dishwasher: at some point, the job is done. While the big project brings a sense of creative stretch and accomplishment, the small jobs delivers staccato bursts of dopamine that, turns out, can be very helpful in actually orienting the brain towards bigger jobs. But the sense of ahhhh is also useful and pleasing in and of itself: not a full meal of completion and satisfaction, but a very delicious little snack. And who doesn't love a little treat?
As a small job, the teacup project was perfect. Aesthetically pleasing, short, and helps my house be less of a disaster? I love checking those boxes!
Maybe my next step is to investigate where my small jobs live, so I can find them more often. They're often little home- or self-improvement tasks, like cleaning out a drawer or doing a skin routine. I don't need to stack them up or do too many of them, but I might keep a little roster of small jobs I can tackle when the motivation strikes and the timing is good. I know small jobs give the illusion that more is happening and that I have control over any of it, but the reality is, I can control a small job.
I need to remember that this is not, actually, a grind: that these little jobs provide me with an outcome I enjoy, that can be done in under 30 minutes, and that make my life just a little bit nicer. In an era of my life when things are often grindy and, frankly, not very nice, I can do a small job and feel kind of good about it. The teacups, hanging and beautiful, feel good.
