Leather and cotton and clay and pine.

Refocusing my mind on creativity.

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I walk through the S-Bahn door as it hisses and slides open. Before my seat touches the train’s, my mind is on fire. I am running a visual deconstruction program, into which I have loaded the latest of my designs for a leather wallet. The main problem I’m trying to solve is maintaining a slim profile without compromising its utility. It must accommodate at least five cards (although as many as a dozen would be ideal), cash and coins. I consider the validity of separating the coins from the cash; I hate digging through one to find the other, especially under pressure in a long queue. I psychically rotate the wallet I’ve conceived of. It has two main compartments: one with a zipper that holds coins and, possibly, cash - I make a note to revise this; the other isn’t totally enclosed, but is folded over. It unfolds to reveal five cards that have been tightly packed together. By their design, cards are the most compact when they are also the most impractical. I need to access a considerable amount of the broadside of the card in order to identify, access and use it, but storing it like this is noticeably inefficient. The inverse is also true: storing a card in its most space-efficient orientation leaves none of it visible, such that I can differentiate the cards from one another or select any individual. The challenge, then, is to store the cards in their most efficient form, but as soon as I want to access them, i.e. open the wallet, their orientation is altered such that they become visible and accessible, and, therefore, useful. I consider how this impacts the size and complexity of my design. I consider the materials I may need and compare them with the ones I have access to. As I am mentally ripping seams and removing layer upon layer of leather, altering their shape, my subconscious mind notices the familiar silhouette of the skyline outside of the window. I jump, and come jittering through the unforgiving train doors milliseconds before they shut again. I almost missed my stop!

In my first year in Berlin, I always had a project I was busy with. While working thirty five hours a week as an au pair and fitting in twelve hours of language school in my free time, I managed to find the will to design and produce two leather wallets (I designed the first for my girlfriend and recreated it for my mother at her request); I sewed a simple leather toiletry bag for my girlfriend’s sister for her birthday; I sewed two patch-work book bags for my girlfriend and a friend of hers; I embroidered seven flags into the strap of my go-to travel bag; I made a new strap for my wristwatch; I threw about five ceramic coffee mugs, none of which I was especially impressed with, and therefore subsequently never fired; I designed and built myself first a small and later a larger coffee table; I reframed a mirror for my girlfriend (the original frame of which I had accidentally destroyed); I built a (very wonky) bookcase to fill the gap between the wardrobe and the wall in my girlfriend’s room; I even invested about fifty hours into stripping a wooden pallet to turn the raw planks into a chair which ultimately collapsed and went straight back into the dumpster I’d rescued it from.

I’ve done painfully little of this since moving and switching jobs. I’m not convinced I’m busier now than I was then, though I am, perhaps, not at home as often. It occurs to me that this list may sound long and exhausting, like a list of chores, to some (my mother comes to mind), but to me, this is my favourite hobby! Bringing ephemeral things that exist only in my imagination into the physical world. I think it’s a damn shame that I have precious little to point to that I have conjured from my mind in the last four months. It would be easy to villainise the job and the move and ‘adulthood’, but I think the real issue is small and rectangular and fits in my hand. I’ve noticed a considerable uptick in my phone usage since starting the photography job. On the train to work, I watch YouTube. On the train back from work, I watch YouTube. That’s already an hour. I’m starving when I get home, so I pop on a show and cook myself dinner and then queue up the next episode to accompany me while I wash the dishes. At the end of the day, I come down to my room, tell myself I’m too exhausted to write or read or sew or think, so I watch a movie until my eyelids succumb to gravity.

I don’t love this pattern. I even have a fear, hidden somewhere within my bowels, that it will kill some part of me - legacy or achievement or success or creativity or satisfaction or something. What shall I do to adjust my behaviour? Slowly alter my routine to displace the activities I dislike with ones I find more stimulating and rewarding, step by step, leading to a healthier, more balanced lifestyle? No! An immediate and legalistic digital detox, of course! On the day this journal is published, my girlfriend and I are going on holiday with her family for a week. I’m not downloading anything on Netflix, I’m not finding a new audiobook, I won’t be scrolling through YouTube alone in bed while everyone is downstairs: I’ll be packing a book and a journal and a dice game. My girlfriend has vowed to detox with me. My hope is that the time away triggers some latent idea that I find so brilliant and absorbing that I simply won’t have a choice but to go back to daydreaming on the train!

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I’ll also be taking a week away from Jeremy’s Journal - see you again on the seventh of June! If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.