You must create when it all feels quite impossible. When it IS impossible. Especially in those times. In fact, you should create THE MOST during the moments when you have zero minutes. None, nada, zilch. Let alone hours (what are they?!). When your head might just explode if someone asks you one more thing and for the love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (and the donkey) please can’t everyone and everything leave me alone?

(But yes, ok, and wait a minute, I’ll be right with you.)

For example:

How to Paint a Bunch of Flowers (Caregiver Edition)

2. The nice lady asks if you need help and you squeak that you are fine. And you ARE fine, if fine means wanting to clasp every single paint and pencil and pastel and glorious piece of at least 250- 300gsm paper to your questionable bosom you’re still hoping might flourish with the menopause whilst shrieking ART SUPPLIES MAKE ME FEEL ALIVE. Instead, you settle on a big white mixed media sketchbook, two paint brushes and some gouache. What were you thinking, Little Miss I’ll-Just-Draw-On-The-iPad. What a fool!

3. You continue to walk normally with your very normal face and very normal collection of purchases over to the counter like a very normal person. The very nice normal lady swipes your card, and it declines. You, in a very normal voice, and her, in her very nice normal way, decide that your international card is not vibing with their machine (vibe, dammit, vibe!). You smile in the same way a fox does when they’re about to mutilate the chickens.

4. Dramatic music sounds, just like on quiz shows when someone has to spell “rhythm” for the million dollars (who can ever spell that word?!) and the rest of the family named Wayne, Cheryl and Beverly burn their eyeballs into your spine thinking about the spending spree they’ll go on at Ikea whilst clasping their hands tightly and wiggling round. The pressure of it is almost your undoing. You know there are two options.

You can:

a. Place your lovely things back on the shelf and leave.

b. Use your dad’s card that you’ve been given to buy groceries and be transported to a time warp where you are once again 16.

5. Exit art shop. You are now 16.

6. You’re back home. You unpack all the groceries, then decide against it, and pull them out again. Instead, you clean the fridge. What an unplanned workout for your biceps! You unpack and restack the groceries again. You talk to your parent’s dog, and croon and pat her and say please don’t put your nose in there. Or there. Or even there. You explain to your people on the couch- the one that’s just come out of hospital- about the sketchbook and the 16-year-old and the pay-you-back while your head’s inside the fridge and you check if anyone is hungry and have their drunk enough water and do they need any help. The fire has almost gone out, it’s getting cold, so you go and get more wood. You pass the singular log outside that you extracted from the fire because you caught sight of a lizard, and you say, “hello lizard” and wave your fingers which are the same fingers holding the wood bucket which is really rather awkward.

7. You now sit down and admire your new sketchbook. You really bloody love a good sketchbook. You admire her like she’s your newborn child. Is that weird? You decide you could care less. She might be your favourite yet! Which is a disaster, because now you have to figure out how to take at least 23 of them home with you on the plane when you’re already nudging up against your luggage limit.

8. {DEFINITION} ‘Foreboding joy: a self-protective defense mechanism where moments of happiness are immediately followed by dread or anxiety.’ You think that Brené Brown created this definition when she fell in love with art supplies she might not be able to replace because she’s live far away from the place of purchase and wot a disaster.

9. Your tongue is very slightly out the side of your mouth, and your eyes have entered hyperfocus as you open the pandora’s box of your new gouache paints. You’re just about to examine the green (it’s lovely) when a voice calls out to help them with their socks. You congratulate yourself on how cheery your voice is when you reply “coming!”.

10. Whoever invented pressure socks hated the humans that had to put them on.

11. You manage to quickly draw a rough outline of some flowers.

12. You pull out the paper bag with medication and spread the eleventy billion packets on the counter. You proceed with the focus of brain surgeon and the knowledge of a pharmacologist. You place the half a tablet that’s the size of a small ant’s liver shrivelled in the sun next to the others the size of newly colonised islands and let them all rattle around in the bottom of the cup along with the others that you’re peddling.

13. You return back to the table and your sketchbook and your two paint brushes and your gouache and your 3B pencil with the enthusiasm of an Italian about to eat Spaghetti. You fill paint inside a single petal.

14. There’s a complaint from the couch that there are potatoes instead of pears atop their muesli. This solves the mystery of the leftover potatoes from last night. We both agree that this is “unideal”. You let out a little snort.

15. Your mum shouts to you that she’s done the washing and appears with one sock and two pairs of your undies that you’d given her when she’d asked if you had any washing earlier. She proclaims “I’ve been looking for these” whilst examining your not-that-interesting pants that weirdly you now feel quite attached to. You suppress the urge to snatch them back. You now have one sock and no undies. Future You perceives a problem here.

16. You feel benevolent momentarily, like Mother Theresa. You suspect she never had her undies stolen by her mother. This particular problem feels quite niche.

17. You tell your dad you might have to buy some undies. You hide your single sock in the drawer and do a quick search for the other one. It’s disappointing.

18. You realise by this stage you have no thoughts. The inside of your headspace sounds the same as the 15 second samples you’ve been targeted with on Facebook for those ADHD apps that sell white noise. Maybe you have ADHD. Maybe you have no brain. Both feel possible. You think about the work you have to do, your kids at home, feel your ribs expand and freeze, but return to the table to continue to not do the painting you have tried for the last three hours to paint past the first petal.

19. A painting of flowers.

The Situation