This card covers a lot for me.

When you do the exercise, you have to sort concepts down from 57, all the way down to five. And as I’ve alluded here before, it’s not about finding THE FIVE, the ones that define you and box you in. It’s about identifying some of the things that have affected, are affecting your choices in your recent life, in order to better understand your position. It’s about allowing the thought processes surrounding your values to affect your vision and mission. Eventually to affect your choices and the work of your hands and your mind.

So, one of the ways you do this is by “nesting” concepts. People often end up looking at some binaries. Some either/or’s. For instance, people will sit and hold “True Friendship” and “Mature Love”. Which is it? They look at the little descriptions on the bottom of the cards, and I encourage them to ignore the little descriptions, preferring their own conceptions of what the words on the cards mean. Is it more this or is it more that?

And then they’ll “nest” one concept under the other. For me, personally, I ended up “nesting” Mature Love under True Friendship. Because True Friendship is obviously the best card in the deck. Everything wonderful can fit neatly under its banner. I digress.

Creativity is important because there’s no Painting card. No Sculpture card. No Poetry card. No Essay Writing card. Not even a Musicality card. And for each of us, I think there is a creativity available for us to pluck out of the darkness of our guts and present to the world.

Some people don’t feel creative. But I say to them, I think they probably are.

I have always felt creative. And I’ve always expressed that creativity somehow. I am good at building coffee shops. I’ve done two, and the second one was better than the first. I’d really like to do another one. In this economy!?I like to draw plans. I find a space we might move or expand into and I draw it over, and over, and over. Graph paper everywhere.

I have developed a comprehensive plan for a home I’d like to build for my wife and me to live in one day. It’s called “The Aggregate House” and it’s about gathering and warmth and solidarity into the future. I’ve thought out many details and I really think it would be a special place.

I am converting horse stalls into chicken pens. I am a very poor watercolor painter. And I love to write. I think this project—these essays you’re reading are some of the most creative, generative things I’ve done in years and years. I have, as of this post landing in your inbox, completed 57 essays—one for each of the cards in the deck. They’re releasing slowly over time, but they are complete now. I am proud of this accomplishment and frankly, a little shocked.

I have been moved by the experience of doing this card sorting exercise with so many people over the last couple of years, and I have wondered how it might morph. How it might change. And one day I just sat down and began. I wrote one essay, and then another and another and now I’m making lists of other things to write about. I feel like I’m cracking into a little treat that I’ve held onto for a long time. I don’t even know what it will bring about. But I hope this creative venture never ends—it’s been so beautiful. I want to refine. I want to hone. I want my hundredth essay to make my first look positively amateur, because that’s how these things go. We start, we botch, we reframe, we start over. Eventually we share.

That’s how baking goes for me. Woodworking. Anything creative I’ve ever done, or certainly that I’ve ever succeeded in has begun. Somewhere, sometime. It has a beginning. Why not now? Why not today?

In my youth creativity was ancillary. It happened or it didn’t; I had no intentions. In my younger adulthood I attempted to tie creativity to vocation or obligation. “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with”.

These essays are expressions of my creative energy blasting out through the cracks formed in the mundane. Roasting 20 batches of coffee in a row. Making payroll. Changing oil and household chores. It takes me a minute to get rolling, creatively speaking. I have to break free from something external that limits and hinders creativity. It’s all the pressure to do and produce, you know? It’s finances and the speed of life. Creativity feels like such a waste when productivity is on the table. We must be mindful. We must decide. We must break free.

This world can be bitter. It’s cold and it’s inhospitable, a lot of the time for a lot of the people. And creativity, generating something lovely—whatever it is—from nothing is one of the kindest, freest things we can do for and alongside our fellow humans. I have a profound sense of value for creativity in its various forms. It’s my joy to sit down with people and be present when something creative unlocks within them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com