The macrame curtain for the outdoor shower
Creative living doesn’t always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it arrives quietly — on an ordinary afternoon, in the form of a macrame curtain for an outdoor shower.
This afternoon I finished a piece I had been imagining for a while. Nothing grand. Nothing that will end up in a gallery or on someone’s mood board. Just rope, knots, and hours of quiet work with my hands.
When I installed it and stepped back to look, something settled in me. It felt perfect. Not because it was technically flawless — I’m no expert — but because I made it. I imagined it, I worked on it, and now it exists in the world in a form it didn’t have before.
That feeling. That’s what I want to talk about.
Years of trying — and a promise I made to myself
When I moved to Baja California Sur, I needed to find a way to make a living. What followed were years of trying — real estate, management of various kinds, project management, tour operating, and more things I’ve already half forgotten. I threw myself into options, testing and discarding, searching for something that fit.
Back in Montreal, before any of this, I had burned out. And I made myself a promise in the aftermath: no job would ever take my health again. I would only do what felt right. I would only work in alignment — with my values, with my energy, with who I actually am. Same for the people around me. Same for everything.
It sounds simple. It is not simple.
For the last few years, I have felt a low hum of chaos underneath my days. I love what I do — genuinely. But love and fulfillment are not always the same thing. Something has been feeling not quite right, and I haven’t always been able to name it.
Starting this blog has been a blessing I didn’t fully anticipate. Writing has become something like journaling — but better, because it’s directed. It gives me a reason to sit with myself, to think about what actually matters, to put words to things I’ve been carrying quietly. Every post is a small act of creative living. And making things, I am learning, is essential to me.
But the pull I’m feeling now goes even deeper than words.
I never thought I was creative
There was no art in my home growing up. No paintings on the walls, no sketchbooks on the table, no one sitting down to make something just for the pleasure of it. It wasn’t a lack of love — it was simply not part of the world I was handed.
So I grew up not seeing myself as creative. Not because I believed I lacked something, but because the possibility had never really been placed in front of me. You can’t reach for a door you don’t know is there.
Then someone challenged that story.
A wise woman once said to me: Of course you’re creative. You are the daughter of the Creator.
I have been thinking about that ever since.
An afternoon at Omer Deserres
Years ago, I was dating a sculptor. A really gifted one. One day he suggested we have an artsy date — that I pick the activity. I walked into Omer Deserres, Montreal’s beloved art supply store, and bought acrylic paint in primary colours, a couple of good brushes, and a canvas.
That afternoon, I painted my first painting.
It was nothing special by any objective measure. But something opened. A door I hadn’t known was there swung wide, and light came through it.
Since then, creative living has woven itself into my life in ways I didn’t plan. I painted — not professionally, but regularly, with real pleasure. I had gardens in Montreal and in Kuujjuaq — hands in the soil, something growing because I tended it. After moving to La Ventana, I discovered more mediums: clay, macrame, broken tiles and grout pressed into a new floor, woodwork. Each one different, each one offering the same essential thing.
Presence.
Flow — when time disappears
When I create, something shifts.
Time doesn’t matter anymore. The space around me opens up and narrows down simultaneously — I am aware of everything and focused on one thing. My mind is resting, yet alert. I am completely here.
I have felt it in other places too.
When I dance, it’s there. When I am underwater — diving, suspended in that silent blue world — it’s there. In the garden, hands in the earth, time folding gently around me. These are not separate experiences. They are the same experience wearing different clothes.
This is what creative living actually feels like from the inside. Not performance. Not productivity. Just presence — full, quiet, alive.
Of course you’re creative — you are the daughter of the Creator
That sentence landed differently each time I returned to it.
Because what it says, underneath the words, is this: creative living is not a talent reserved for the gifted few. It is not something you either have or don’t have. It is something you were born with — something woven into you at the source.
We are all making things, all the time. We make meals, we make conversations, we make homes, we make meaning. The question is not whether we are creative. The question is whether we are paying attention to what wants to be made through us.
I am starting to pay attention.
I haven’t figured it out yet. But something is pulling.
I want to be honest: I have not arrived anywhere. I am not writing this from a place of clarity and resolution. I haven’t made the leap yet. I haven’t quit anything or started anything official or figured out how to turn what I love into what sustains me.
What I have is a pull. A quiet, persistent pull toward creative living — toward using my hands, toward making things, toward carpentry and silversmithing — mediums I haven’t fully explored yet but that keep appearing in my imagination. Toward days that have space in them. Toward a life where making something is not a hobby squeezed into the margins but a central, necessary act.
I don’t yet know exactly how to build it. But I know what it feels like when I’m close — that feeling this afternoon, stepping back from a macrame curtain for an outdoor shower in the Mexican desert, something settling in me like a quiet yes.
I am the daughter of the Creator.
I am just remembering it.