Reader,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I show up in the world, and I realized something interesting about myself. I’m both a big-picture ideas person and someone who’s deeply attuned to the micro details. It’s like I love to build these grand things—things that maybe no one has seen before—but at the same time, I’m also really into breaking those big ideas down into their tiny parts. I can see how all the little things add up to create a big experience. For most of my life, I've been led to believe that it is only the big ideas that matter. I'm happy to debunk that here.
Take my recent solo trip, for example. While I was in my hotel room, I started noticing the smallest things, like how the chair made this awful screeching sound across the floor when I moved it. "They could have easily fixed that with those little chair slider puffs," I thought to myself. Or how the bathroom garbage can was just awkwardly placed—so much so that I kept bumping into it. "A slimmer, rectangle-shaped can would have been a game-changer!"
Although these "noticings" didn't affect my experience too much, it did make me question why I paid so much attention to these small things. I realized that this attention to detail is something I see in my writing and editing too. When I’m revising poems or working on a piece, those small micro changes can totally transform the work. I might spend 20 minutes fussing over adding an em dash, or an extra space between lines, but understanding the potential outcomes (the experience) allows me to VALUE those 20 minutes. It's not me wasting time. Those 20 minutes are small piece of a bigger idea. A ripple. A valuable ripple.
This detail work is just another way I can show up for creatives—focusing not just on the big, bold projects like developmental editing or building coaching programs from scratch, but also on the tiny details that really matter to the person in front of me. This is how we start to value our work, when we can understand, intimately how we've built it.
I was recently chatting with a prolific author about how care often starts with those small, micro things that most people overlook. Like having Advil on hand at a literary festival. It’s such a small thing, but it can make all the difference in someone’s day, especially if there’s no drugstore nearby. How we notice is a huge part of any creative endeavour, and plays a massive role in someone's experience.
Sometimes we spend so much time waiting for huge ripples that we miss out on the micro opportunities to transform ourselves and others.
Reflective Question: What little things do you notice that can add up to an experience for yourself or someone else? How does this "noticing" connect to who you are?
Chelene
