What if you* just try?

*by which I mean, me!

I'm always on an inspiration hunt, and one of my go-to places to hunt is Substack. I subscribe to a lot of different writers' and artists' newsletters and I love seeing the various projects they're working on. And I often find myself thinking, "Oh, cool...maybe I'll try something like that some day."

The other day I was reading Wendy MacNaughton's "Draw Together" newsletter, which gives readers different art prompts throughout the year. In this issue she'd written about artists who weave paper or painted canvas. One of the examples she gave was from Helen Hiebert:

I loved it so much, especially the effect Hiebert got from cutting the paper in curves instead of doing straight strips. I thought, hmm, maybe it would be fun to try wavy paper weaving some day.

And then I came to...today! I was meeting with my weekly co-working group this morning. As I've written here, we tend to use the Pomodoro technique which involves setting a goal, setting a timer, and getting to work. Usually I save these work sprints for tasks that are easy to check off a list, like replying to emails. But today I had a sudden burst of inspiration:

What if I gave myself just the length of one Pomodoro (which in this case was going to be 30 minutes) to make some art? Specifically, to try my hand at paper weaving?

What's that saying? Things that can happen anytime often happen none of the time? Something like that. Anyway, my thinking was, I could sit around saying "Oh, one day it would be cool to try paper weaving," or...I could just try!

And so, reader, I did.

(Left-hand image: spread from an old New York Times magazine; right-hand image: piece of blue tissue paper.)

Using the timer forced me to short-circuit my indecision. I just grabbed the first two pieces of interesting paper in my collage stack. I drew some wavy lines. Then I grabbed scissors and a glue stick and got to work!

It wasn't amazing. It was messy. I messed stuff up. Some of my cuts were jagged; some of my pencil lines were visible; some of my edges didn't match up; the whole thing was kind of wonky and didn't lie flat in the end. But I did it!

It was not easy. Note to self, tissue paper is hard to work with! The glossy paper was easier; I think next time I'll try two pieces of glossy paper instead. And next time I'll take more time to do things a bit more precisely. But the point is, now I feel like there will be a next time. I got over the hurdle of never having done this kind of wavy paper weaving before. And now I have!

So next time you're having that "some day maybe I'll..." feeling, why not set the timer and try doing it...today?