Making Beautiful Things

March 29, 2026

Today I had a realisation: I feel as though it has been a very long time since I made something beautiful.

This is just a feeling, and it is objectively untrue. I sent a silly, funny, pointless, beautiful text to a friend yesterday. But the feeling is there anyway. I guess I am having trouble remembering these things when I need to.

Thinking about the stuff I have been focussed on for the last 6-12 months, my main foci have been rather ruthlessly functional:

• Employment – like many businesses, my employer is not against beauty as long as it serves a functional need. But the functional need will always come first.
• Caring for friends & family who are going through a variety of life changes and health events.
• Adjusting my own ways of living life, since it insists on changing all the time.

I have spent a lot of time and attention on surviving, and on fighting ugliness: holding out against certain trends of the technology industry; adjusting my daily routines to avoid exhaustion; maintaining my body; arguing against things at work that I think will go badly.

A lot of this work has been creative, in that it has required creative problem solving and communication. And I get some abstract satisfaction from knowing I have made a difference in people’s lives, or from solving problems for my employer and my colleagues. This work is (or can be) important.

But it is not satisfying me. There is something missing. I think that thing is satisfaction from creating beauty.

I also notice that I have not been doing so much of the things that give me a sense of beauty, fulfilment, joy, wonder or expression:

• Music, especially singing
• Writing
• Hiking, trail running, or otherwise getting out into green places
• Playing with tech for joy and creativity¹

All in all, my current activities are not giving me as much joyful fulfillment as I need. Some, for sure! But not enough. And the cracks have been showing, at least to me. Lately I have generally been less patient and kind than I want to be, especially at work. I am sure that has dented at least a few relationships, and I suspect it’s cost me some opportunities.

Obviously, I need to change something. At the moment, the set of things I feel ready to change right away is limited to the incremental and relatively undemanding. Even if I made a big, dramatic commitment to turn my life around, quit my job and focus on Making Beauty, I would expect that resolution to fail within 24 hours.

So what can I change? And how can I make it stick?

Here are my 2 my best ideas so far.

1. Make tiny, beautiful things daily

Every day for 1 month, I will do or make a tiny thing, just for the sake of making something beautiful.

• The things themselves do not need to be beautiful! Failure (or pre-success) is an option. I just need to do or make with the intent of making something beautiful.
• I will keep a record of the tiny things I have made and done, to look back on when I need to. I may or may not share any of them with anybody.
• Things I do for work do not count. They might be beautiful, but I am not doing them for their beauty. I am doing them for money, which is a useful but very different motivation! Since motivation is an important part of this, work things are out.
• Beautiful does not mean pretty, though they might coincide and I hope they do. Beautiful means … well, I know it when I see it. My beautiful things might be pretty, or heartwarming, or elegant, or tragic, or harmonious, or funny, or just the right kind of terrible. Or something else entirely.
• Right now, I intend to continue after that month. But right now I’m inspired and optimistic, and that will not last. I will need help to keep this up.

2. Stop fighting the ugly with more ugly

(…and undermine the ugly with beauty instead.)

I will try to avoid fighting the ugliness I see (or expect, or fear) with more ugliness – unconstructive argument, futile resistance, passive aggression. It has not been helping me, and I doubt that it helps those who receive it. It lends strength to what I want to oppose.

I am getting a better idea of the places within myself where those responses are coming from. I hope that means I can do better at recognising them when they happen, and find a more beautiful way to respond. Or if I cannot create beauty there, at least let that thing go and use my energy elsewhere.

In the meantime, I know I mostly only recognise my uglier creations after it’s too late. I want to avoid making those messes, and for that I will need earlier, stronger signals that I am about to create one.

Externally, this might not look like much. It will probably be more observable as a lack of crappy behaviour than the presence of anything better.

Internally, I think it will probably mean extending the benefit of the doubt more of the time, and trying to remember that when I feel resistance to an idea, that is the time to listen harder.

But… how?

This will be hard. Like, hard hard.

• I do not have a great track record of keeping “every day” resolutions. I will forgive myself for the days I miss, and then keep going.
• I know that high-minded resolutions don’t mean squat when someone is wrong on the internet. I need to think about how I can catch myself before I say things I wind up regretting.
• My ego and I get so damn tired of realising we know nothing. But that is the time when I need to extend the benefit of the doubt, and listen harder. Learning opportunities are not threats, so I guess I have some reframing work to do.

pursues knowledge

considers

Persisting post-novelty

I have been using Finch for a while, to help me check in on the self care things I intend to do each day. “Make a tiny beautiful thing” would fit in nicely there, to help me remember.

I am also posting this where people might see it. My name is pretty distinctive, so there’s not a lot of deniability here.

Keeping stuff to look back on

I think a folder on my NextCloud server is probably the simplest thing I could do here. Just about anything I am likely to make for beauty’s sake can go in, or be described in, a file: photos, writing, videos, links. If I make something that does not fit, I can solve that when it happens. And a private server means that I can save this stuff there comfortably, even if it winds up being deeply personal or otherwise not for sharing.

Preventing regrettable outbursts

For me, the impulsive stuff I regret has taken the form of written messages online: Slack replies, code review comments, etc. So a tool that checks my writing could be really helpful, as long as the false positive rate is low (I might start ignoring it otherwise). But sending every word I write to a remote server is unacceptable! Respect for privacy is super important, for me and my employer both.

Convosify’s Message Guardian seems too good to be true. A quick search for scammy feedback turned up nothing notable, which I guess is a good thing. I might give it a go, and use Little Snitch to make sure it stays off the internet.

Extending the benefit of the doubt

I have only given this a couple of hours of serious thought, but so far I am coming up short on any ideas for supporting myself to do this in the moment.

Maybe I am not ready yet. Maybe those impulsive responses are getting in my way, removing the option of listening or being curious. So I will try to work on that and see if this gets any easier. If not, maybe I will have some ideas about it in the meantime, or I can phone a friend.

Okie dokie. Time to give it a go.