Creativity Is a Muscle. Are You Working Yours?

This past Sunday morning I pulled on my boots, walked into our wood, and let the season show me what it had. What I found stopped me: a scatter of trout lilies trembling in the leaf litter, their mottled leaves catching the light in that particular way spring light has — low, golden, apologetic almost, as if it still can’t quite believe winter is over.

I kept walking. I came home with lungwort and forsythia branches blazing yellow, daffodils in more varieties than I could name, some light choke cherry, and a handful of delphinium I’d been saving. I pulled out a vintage bowl, cut a square of chicken wire to hold things in place, and got to work.

From the studio

No plan. No Pinterest board. Just the flowers, the light through the greenhouse, and the way one stem seemed to want to lean into another. I let the branches and blooms dictate the whole thing.

A few moments later I stood back, hands still a little damp, and felt that particular kind of satisfaction that only comes from making something. Not producing something. Not completing a task. Making something — with my hands, in real time, for no reason except that it was beautiful and I wanted it to exist.

“I lose myself in a few quiet moments and feel so satisfied with the beauty of result. That feeling is not a luxury. It's a necessity."

We talk a lot about self-care — sleep, movement, nutrition. All important. But I want to make the case for creative practice as its own essential category. Not because it produces anything. Not because you’ll sell it or share it or be congratulated for it. But because the act of creating — of making something where nothing was before — opens a part of the mind that stays closed the rest of the week.

It brings you back into your body. It trains your eye to notice. It reminds you that you are capable of more than your to-do list suggests.

And here’s the thing I truly believe:

“Creativity is a muscle. The more you use it, the more you have.”

It doesn’t matter what the practice is. Flowers, yes — but also bread dough, a sketchbook, a piece of driftwood, a song you’re teaching yourself on guitar, a corner of the garden, a photograph, a paragraph. The medium is almost beside the point.

What matters is showing up for it regularly, treating it as non-negotiable, giving it the same reverence you’d give a workout or a meeting.

That When I arrange flowers — or do anything creative — I stay present in a way that my ordinary hours rarely allow. I’m not planning dinner or scrolling or half-listening to something. I’m here, solving the small beautiful problem in front of me: does this branch go left or right? Does the lungwort balance the daffodil? Is there enough air between the stems?

These are genuinely small questions. And they are genuinely restorative.

I come out of those quiet sessions with my imagination a little more open, my problem-solving a little more supple, my mood — reliably, every time — lifted. The creative hour feeds the rest of the week. It is not a distraction from real life. It is real life, the part that reminds you why you’re doing all the rest of it.

This week’s forage

Choke Cherry · Forsythia branches · Daffodils (so many varieties) · Lungwort · Delphinium · Lisianthus. One vintage bowl · A square of chicken wire · One quiet Sunday morning

Spring is the most generous season for this kind of thing. It is practically begging you to notice it. Step outside. Let the season show you what it’s made of. Bring something home. Put it in whatever vessel you have. See what happens.

And if flowers aren’t your thing — find your thing. Then protect the time for it. Prioritize it. Fill up your soul.

Happy spring, and happy creating. 🌿feeling is not a luxury.

xo Dar