What Works

4The Satisfaction of Practice in an Achievement-Oriented World

The rules had been constructed long before I was born, and I did not know yet I was allowed to break them or redefine them or ignore them entirely.

— Jami Attenberg, I Came All This Way to Meet You⁴⁰

THANKS TO MY daughter's persistent recommendation of a particular digital art app, I started drawing in early 2021. Visual art has never been an aspiration of mine. My brother is a talented artist, and anything I tried to create paled in comparison to his effortless renderings. And goodness knows I don't like to play second fiddle. But sketching on my iPad while watching YouTube or bingeing old television shows in the evening became a way to calm my mind as I went through a particularly difficult mental health year.

At first, I played with color and textures—nonrepresentational art. Then, I followed step-by-step tutorials to recreate images. Eventually, I gave myself the go-ahead to fly solo. Instead of relying on someone's detailed instructions, I would find an image I liked and break it down into shapes and proportions that I could recreate. It's been slow yet rewarding work. This drawing practice has also been a study in finding satisfaction with imperfection and inadequacy as well as joy in the process rather than in accomplishment. I've probably created a thousand or more images in a thousand or more hours. None of them will make me any money or win me any accolades. Not so long ago, I would not have devoted ...