This newsletter from Cheryl Strayed arrived this week as I was getting news about company layoffs (I’m not affected but I was RIGHT to be worried) and wow what a good reminder (emphasis mine):
Every time I’ve made or done something, I’ve felt better. It’s a fact I’ve returned to over and over again in these past months/years/decades in order to save myself or toss a lifeline to someone else. Action and creation are a salve, a balm, a cure.
Perhaps making and doing things is so powerful because in doing or making you break out of stasis. Even if only fleetingly, you get unstuck and, afterwards, have proof of that. Something exists because you made it. Something happened because you did it. You baked the cake and decorated it attentively and inexpertly. You showed up at the protest with longing in your heart and a smile on your face. You shot and edited the footage and now you’ve got a movie. You stitched the scraps of fabric together and ended up with a quilt. You put the seeds in the soil and eventually a flower bloomed. You put one foot in front of the other and then looked back and realized you’d covered all that ground on your own steam. Your troubles were not over. Your problems were not solved. But you had something. You did something. You could not deny that. You made it this far and making it this far meant you could keep going.
Keep up those hobbies, friends.