Overflow Energy

My husband has a saying about me that I think I’ve mentioned before—the scariest and most expensive sound in our house is when I get out the tape measure.

He's not wrong. I have always had a restless kind of energy—the sort that needs somewhere to go. Over the years it's shown up in a lot of different ways. Different art styles, different mediums, different projects. I've genuinely loved putting together an IKEA bookcase when the moment called for it. Something about the assembling, the following-of-steps, the thing that didn't exist and now does.

Lately, it's been showing up in two main places.

The first is linocut printing. I'm working with a speedy carve block and I have probably eight different designs going at once, all of it happening on our dining room table in whatever time I can find. What I love about it—and what I think says something about how my brain works—is the production loop. I can sit down and carve. Or I can pull out something I've already carved and just print. It doesn't have to take long. None of it is particularly practical.

My dad has gotten into watercolor and acrylic, and he talks about what he loves—the patience required, the way you have to watch the layers build and wait to see what you actually have. I (sort of) understand that. But what I love about printmaking is almost the opposite impulse—the ability to see something, decide you don't like it, go back in and fix it. Didn't like that line? Take it out. Wrong ink color? Try another one. You can still use the block either way.

The second is an AI app builder called Base44. I've been using it to solve problems I see at school—pulling our carpool system, attendance tracking, and crisis response into something that actually makes sense together. I built a closet organizer for my mom, who lives between multiple places and needed a way to track what's where. I built a social game organizer because it sounded interesting and I wanted to see if I could.

When I tell people about this, the response is usually some version of “when are you doing all of this?” There's an assumption in the question that I've found extra hours somewhere, or that I'm unusually disciplined about time. Neither of which is the case.

The reality is simpler and, quite frankly, a little less flattering: I just have the energy. I don't rest well. And making things—whether digital or analog—gives it somewhere to go.

But here is what may actually be happening.

So much of my work is long-range. Multiple conversations, slow-moving systems, changes that unfold across months or years. You're tweaking, yes—but you're tweaking in real time, which can feel like slow time even when things are moving fast. The feedback is deferred. The loop stays open.

What I get from the prints and the apps and yes, the IKEA bookcase, is a closed loop. I can see something, adjust it, see it again, and get to a version I'm happy with—all in a single sitting. That's not a small thing when most of your days don't work that way.

So the question I keep circling is not "when are you doing all of this?” but instead “what do I actually need to rest from?”

I'm still working on that answer. But I think the making might be part of it—not something that competes with rest, but something that quietly substitutes for a kind of mental spinning that would otherwise have nowhere to land.