Most of us have gone through seasons when life feels unusually heavy. Work is exhausting. The news is discouraging. The responsibilities keep coming, but our energy does not. Even the activities that normally help us recharge, like exercise, meditation, prayer, gratitude practices, or simply taking a break don’t seem to lift the fog.

When our usual ways of recharging fall short, we often reach for distraction instead. We eat comfort food, binge another television series, scroll social media, watch endless videos, catch up on the news, or lose ourselves in an online game. Our natural inclination is to consume something that takes our minds somewhere else.

But what if we ignored that voice urging us to consume just one more thing? What if, instead, we reached for a paintbrush, a garden spade, a camera, a mixing bowl, a guitar, or a notebook? What if, instead of consuming, we created?

I’ve discovered that when I find myself in one of these funks, creating something almost always helps more than consuming something. During the height of the pandemic, I found myself in exactly that place. Reading the news wasn’t helping, and mindlessly scrolling only left me feeling more drained. I needed to stop consuming the weight of the world and start making something entirely outside of it.

Enter the pig planter.

For reasons I still cannot entirely explain, I decided to build a massive, elaborate pig planter to be filled with flowers, plants, and succulents. Armed with zero formal training and very little artistic ability, I set to work. I purchased chicken wire, burlap, landscape liner, soil, and a variety of plants. I shaped the body first and capped off the pig’s backside with a trash can lid and a curly tail made from heavy-gauge wire. The head proved more challenging. By the time I finished it, I realized I had created something that looked far more like a miniature horse than a pig. Rather than start over, I let my creativity take over and added a unicorn horn.

I then filled it with the plants I had purchased and placed it in our front yard. The finished product was better (or at least more interesting) than I could have imagined. People actually stopped their cars, stepped onto the sidewalk, and took pictures of this floral unicorn. For a brief moment in time, my front yard hosted a local celebrity. More importantly, the act of building that ridiculous, beautiful pig-turned-unicorn did something profound. It brought me back to life.

Why Making Things Restores Us

As it turns out, there are good psychological reasons why a stick-figure artist building a floral pig/unicorn can feel so restorative. A 2024 study found that people who engage in arts and crafts report a stronger sense that life is worthwhile, with benefits comparable to those associated with being employed. Creativity appears to nourish something much deeper than our ability to produce a finished product.

When we create, we are not just making an object; we are engaging in what psychologists call behavioral activation. Instead of dwelling on problems we cannot control, our attention shifts to immediate, tangible tasks. We become absorbed in choosing materials, solving little problems, and watching an idea slowly take shape. That process interrupts the cycle of rumination and stress that so often drains our energy.

Of course, creating something does not make life’s problems magically disappear. The diagnosis is still the diagnosis. The financial pressures are still there. The lost relationship still leaves a hole. The uncertainty about the future has not gone away. But the act of creation changes our relationship to those things. I suspect part of the reason is that creating gives us something we often lack when life feels overwhelming: a sense of agency. For a little while, we shift from feeling like passive recipients of whatever the world throws at us to active participants in bringing something new into the world. We make decisions. We solve small problems. We watch something take shape because of our own efforts. Maybe that is enough to remind us that while we cannot control everything happening around us, we are not powerless.

Unfortunately, many people never experience the benefits of artistic creation because they have convinced themselves they simply are not creative. Somewhere along the way, we decided that creativity belongs exclusively to trained painters, musicians, sculptors, and novelists, while the rest of us are left admiring their work from a safe distance.

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert challenges that idea. She argues that creative living is not about producing masterpieces. It is about following curiosity instead of fear. You do not need artistic talent to enjoy the benefits of creating. You simply need the willingness to make something, experiment, and see where it leads.

That idea is supported by the research as well. A 2023 study found that the psychological benefits of creative activities do not depend on artistic skill or technical perfection. The rewards come from the process itself and the freedom to try something new. I can personally attest to that. My creation was anything but technically perfect.

The magic of recharging through creation lies in the willingness to be messy, to experiment, and to let go of the pressure to produce a flawless result. Don’t let an arbitrary definition of “artistic ability” rob you of an activity that might recharge your mind, restore your perspective, and perhaps even result in an accidental unicorn.

The next time the world feels a little too heavy and your battery is running on empty, resist the urge to consume just one more thing. Instead, make something. Plant a garden. Paint a picture. Build a birdhouse. Write a story. Knit a blanket. It does not matter whether anyone else ever sees what you create. You do not have to produce a masterpiece. You simply have to create. When we consume, we passively absorb what the world gives us. When we create, we shape something the world didn’t have before. Perhaps that simple shift from consuming to creating is enough to remind us that while we cannot control everything happening around us, we are not powerless. Sometimes that is exactly what we need to begin climbing out of the fog.