What I'm making during the unmaking

My daily walks are punctuated by the crunch-crunch of broken glass — as close to fallen autumn leaves as my Los Angeles neighborhood gets. Each time I catch a glimmer of a shattered Heineken bottle or pass a pile of busted car window, I slow my pace and consider whether I should scoop it up.

Not just because I want to protect the neighborhood pups, but because I have it in my mind that there’s something I could make out of the broken pieces.

I’m always trying to make something beautiful out of something that has outgrown its usefulness. From dixie cup santas to crocheting a new sweater from a blanket I made my late grandfather many years ago, it’s just how my brain is wired.

It’s a combination of the “waste-not” mindset I inherited from my grandparents, who themselves were children of the Great Depression, and my own hyper sensitivity towards all things. How would I feel if I were shattered and scattered on the busy (but lonely) streets of Los Angeles?

“I’m always trying to make something beautiful out of something that has outgrown its usefulness.”

But to be honest, making anything right now feels impossible — inconceivable, even. Making coffee is about as good as it gets. What do you make during the unmaking? Can we cling to creativity amidst all the destruction?

In the past few weeks, I’ve managed to eke out some crochet rose petals — not complete flowers, mind you — for my partner’s family who are rallying around a loved one who’s been in the hospital. In watching the grief secondhand, it’s all I could offer aside from a listening ear and a soft place to cry.

Assembling them will be another project altogether, but for now, I’m working up stitches during movie nights, while watching the Dodgers games, and when I’m out to drinks with friends. It feels good, but it’s still heavy with grief.

I’m trying to make more complex meals, too, including replicating breakfasts I ate when I was traveling in Spain (pan con tomate, espresso, y un agua con gas).

And during a recent visit back to see my family in Indiana, I commandeered the kitchen to make bibimbap, complete with homemade kimchi and soy eggs. It was a gamble, with some picky eaters in the family, but it felt like a labor of love — look! This is what I make at home! And I’m bringing it to you as an offering.

I’ve brought out the sewing kit, too, to work up some repairs on my partner’s backpack, and to sew a simple hem on my Whimsy + Row dress before dancing the night away at my cousin’s wedding.

So yes, I am still making some things — but so many of them feel attached to necessity, to mourning, to transition. Like I’m making to move forward, whether it’s painful or not, rather than making to simply create.

Yet I should offer myself more grace in these moments; moving forward isn’t a bad thing. It’s simply changing my state into the next one, and the next one, and the next one. So maybe, it’s this: Bring on the broken things, I think we can make them better.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe that everything broken should, or can, become beautiful. There is no polishing over a shameful and corrupt government, historical prejudices and division, or corporate greed that knows no limits.

These are the things that will require us to create from scratch, rather than to just move the needle. And while I don’t believe it’s entirely possible to love hatred into something beautiful, I do think we can might be able to work it into something a little softer, more malleable — a workable medium.

Maybe this is how we repair just enough, so that we can begin to create something together.

In closing, I wanted to share this poem that feels fitting to the themes of shattering glass, of beauty in imperfection, of a love that’s worth fighting for. It’s both a love poem for the author’s wife — and an homage to his home country, France, as it faced the threat of fascism in WW2.

Each week, I’ll share something I’ve learned that makes my life a little easier, more efficient, or just plain more fun.

I’ve recently been using a lot of AI meeting notes to help me with my workflow — and I have to admit, it’s been really helpful. Zoom and Notion offer options to help you recap!

I also used Perplexity to help me make sense of scratch notes I took during a conference (that only offered video replays to the “all-access pass” holders, boo!). But I didn’t just hit paste and ask for a recap — here’s what I asked:

Thoughtful prompt engineering is essential when it comes to getting exactly the outputs you want. The app did, in fact, ask me followup questions before it gave me the results, like clarification on categories and how the notes were formatted.

It took a little massaging in the end, but I was able to cross-reference the AI-generated notes with my original ones; it delivered a clear and actionable outline of the main themes and key takeaways. And, as one speaker at the conference said, “Analyze AI results as an adversary, not an advocate.” Because the AI hallucinations are real, y’all. 👻