…I start with drilling rocks. After a good two weeks away from my studio, there are so many things I want to do, I am paralyzed by indecision. The best thing I can do is drill holes in rocks. I can never have too many to choose from, and it calms my mind to make slow but steady progress on something. There is not much creativity in pressing the lever of a drill press, peck after peck after peck, to work my way through a beach rock. But with each and every pebble I think about how I will use it, or what colors I have to combine with it, or how happy I’ll be to have so many drilled and waxed rocks to choose from when I am sitting down to make new necklaces. By doing something uncreative, I am opening my mind to ideas.
Sometimes there is even a reward to just leaving drilled rocks hanging around on the counter overnight.