Coping 16: Thinking with your hands
Coping is short posts (typically on Fridays) about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 16, making as a way of thinking.
The designers and artists in the room can probably tap out now, because this one will likely be acutely familiar to you. Sometimes if I'm trying to work through an idea or articulate something and it's just not working in words, I get un-stuck by using my hands. I pick up a marker or some paint and I make something.
It doesn't really matter what the thing is, as long as it's done in an attempt to work through whatever idea I'm struggling with. Which is to say: this is a slightly different tactic than moving onto another activity for a while. As best as I can explain it, focusing my attention on an idea, concept, chain of argument, or whatever it may be – while making something that can vaguely be described as a visual or material representation of it – often works for me.
This tactic shares characteristics of doing something else or taking a walk: it's a conscious choice to step away from butting my head repeatedly agains the wall of a difficult task. But it differs from those other tactics in one really useful way. Instead of achieving something else or getting some exercise, I get an object I can look at and wonder about. Often, wondering why the concept I was struggling with has resulted in a given material output helps me get through whatever difficulty I'm mired in.
