On Making as Orientation

I’ve recently realised that I don’t turn to making to relax, to escape, or even to be creative. I turn to it to orient myself.

Sewing, cooking, gardening, knitting — these are the ways I locate myself again after long days spent in abstraction and responsibility. Making gives my thinking somewhere to land. It brings me back into proportion, into sequence, into the quiet assurance that one small, attentive act can still make sense of the day. I don’t make to arrive anywhere.

I make to remember where I am.