Scanning around different blogs, killing time while procrastinating on work-related tasks, I ran across Danny Gregory's blog, where, in one essay, he asked

Why do you do it? Why do you make things? Why spend the money, time, and effort, instead of watching the game on the television?

For me, the odd thing is, it's a question I haven't really formally asked myself. Gregory reported in a followup post that many people emailed him, simply saying "But I must," which is probably the most basic explanation for why I do what I do.

I've always made stuff. When I was a kid, I drew and painted and played with clay and made up songs and made up long stories (even now, I have a "stable" of characters I carry around in my head, and I still make up stories about them to pass the time when I'm stuck somewhere or can't sleep at night). I made elaborate dramas for my stuffed animals to act out, I built dollhouses, I sewed and knitted and crocheted.

As I grew older, some of those activities dropped away. Others came more to the fore. In high school, I petitioned (successfully) to be allowed to set up a totally 3-D art course (I didn't enjoy drawing and painting at that point and was convinced I was not that good at it. But I wailed* at 3-D art, it was one of the few places where I truly felt like one of the "cool kids" because I could just look at some pieces of wood or a lump of clay or plaster and I could make something out of it, something that pleased me and impressed other people.)

(*or is the right word there "whaled"? I don't know, I've only ever heard the phrase "We wailed/whaled on them" to indicate a team doing really well; never seen it in print. But you know what I mean. I kicked butt at 3-D art.)

Another reason I do what I do is I have all these ideas in my head, and if I didn't let a few of them out, my brain would explode.

For me, making stuff is a very deep and important part of who I am. I see it as one of the ways that sets me apart from other people - and yet, again, I have to say I can't understand going through life without a creative hobby. If I were blocked from making stuff, I'd be a very unhappy - perhaps even suicidal - person. Making stuff gets out thoughts and emotions I have, it works out worries and problems, it smooths out my mind and helps me to sleep.

When I make stuff, I feel powerful. I am in control. I choose what color yarn, what fiber content, what pattern. I choose what the characters in my stories do and say. I control my voice (well, usually, at least if my allergies aren't acting up) when I sing.

When I make stuff, I feel a sense of accomplishment. I can point to that thing and say "I did that". I've said before, in teaching and research, what you do is so often intangible - and it gets used up: you grade a whole stack of papers one evening, just to be faced with another the next day. It's like "Aunt Jane of Kentucky" said about quilting - if she didn't have it, if all she had were the stacks and stacks of dishes to wash and the piles and piles of laundry to clean, iron, fold, sort, and mend, she'd just as soon lie down and die. I've also said that knitting (or quilting, or whatever) is time made tangible for me.

One of my great fears, I guess, is that I come to the end of my life and have nothing to show for my time here. Journal articles (what few I have published) are esoteric and of little general interest. Teaching - even though it may touch someone's life - is so intangible, it's here and then it's gone. A quilt, or a teddy bear, something that I could pass down to a still-yet-not-conceived niece or nephew - that feels like something real, something meaningful. (Perhaps if I had children I would feel less of a push to make something that will say "I was here" after I'm gone; perhaps for some people their children fulfill some of that role).

And yet, all of that is eclipsed by the joy of creating. For a short period of time, I am taken out of myself. The worries and concerns I have fade into the background, I can focus on a place of calm and beauty. I can direct my energy to something that is totally mine, that no one can take away from me. No one can diminish my joy of creating, that is something that belongs to me even more totally than my name or appearence does.

I also think - and this may get a bit mystical, or a bit woo-woo for those of you who are not religious - I think that maybe that drive to create is a little spark of the Divine in us. I remember a theologian, on being asked why God made the universe (however you define "made"), who shrugged his shoulders and said, "Creators create." Meaning, it is a part of God, it is part of God's purpose. And couldn't we, as God's people, have in us some of that same drive? I am not a literalist in the sense of believing we were all actually and individually physically hand-molded from clay, but I do think our spirits, our souls, the non-physical part of us, came from somewhere, and perhaps, at least for some of us (or maybe for all of us, and some just don't recognize it), there's that drive put in us to create, to manipulate what we have around us, maybe as a way of understanding the motives and the feelings of the One who made us and Who calls to us.

I don't know, but I have noticed that often times when I'm stuck and sad and frustrated and unable to pray, when my doubts are high and my trust is low, if I go out to the garden and work, or if I pick up my knitting needles, or if I start sewing, I slowly and gradually begin to unstick, my mood improves, and I begin to feel the old blessed connection once again.

And I think that's something that may be overlooked in a lot of conventional religion - that activity can be a form of meditation, and that creating may be a way of connecting with God.