Small Things Matter: A Remedy for Overwhelm
When Everything Feels Too Big
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Theodore Roosevelt said that, a man who also happened to be one of the greatest conservationists this country has ever known. It feels like exactly the right reminder for right now.
When you are feeling overwhelmed, everything can feel like too much, too big, too far beyond your reach to do anything about. The news, the world, the to-do list, the state of things, all of it pressing in at once.
These days I find myself returning to something I've learned from years of paying attention to the natural world: small things matter. Profoundly, surprisingly, and often invisibly, small things matter.
Small Actions for a Big, Hard World
Feeling overwhelmed by the political attacks on our natural world? Maybe you can make one small donation to an environmental organization. I personally send $20 each month to organizations I trust, ones fighting for environmental protections in courts and creating preserves so that habitats don't disappear altogether. Twenty dollars. One small thing.
Maybe it's the atmosphere of hate and animosity that feels like too much right now. A kind word or a smile to a stranger, a clerk at the grocery store, someone who looks like they're having a hard day - these things are not nothing. Kindness and generosity are contagious. A single small act in the spirit of paying it forward can begin to shift how things feel, for you and for the people around you.
Poppies in my front yard.
A Lesson From a Poppy Seed
A California poppy seed is barely the size of a pinhead. You can scatter hundreds of them from your hand without even feeling their weight. But planted in the right soil, that almost invisible seed becomes one of the most iconic wildflowers in the state, a flash of gold that stops people in their tracks, feeds native bees, and reseeds itself season after season without any help. You can barely see the seed. You cannot miss the flower.
That is what small things do. They add up. They ripple outward. They become something you couldn't have predicted from the beginning.
And that is exactly what these Mini Originals are meant to remind you of.
My Mini Original artworks are perfect for tucking into a shelf.
What These Little Pieces Are For
Each of my Mini Originals is just 3x3” small enough to hold in your hand, small enough to tuck onto a shelf or a desk corner. But they carry every layer of love that goes into my larger pieces: photo transfers, acrylic, color pencil, wax pastel, ephemera, built up slowly and intentionally.
Most of these pieces feature insects, the smallest, most overlooked creatures in the natural world, and also some of the most essential. The pipevine swallowtail that can only survive on one specific plant. The native bee that pollinates the flower that feeds the bird. The tiny beetle that breaks down the leaf that feeds the soil. These creatures are doing the most important work in the most invisible way imaginable.
Which makes them the perfect subject for a 3x3" canvas.
Small things. Doing what they were made to do. Where they are. With what they have.
These pieces are small reminders that it's okay to slow down. It's okay to just do one small thing when everything feels like too much. Small things add up to big things. That's just how the world works.
The Invitation
You don't have to fix everything. You don't have to do everything. You just have to do one small thing, and then maybe another.
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." - Theodore Roosevelt
The poppy seed doesn't know it's going to become a flower. It just does what it was made to do, in the small patch of ground where it landed.
That's enough. It really is.
The final release of my Mini Originals is happening soon - only forty small pieces, each a reminder that little things matter. $45 each, or two for $75. My email list gets first access, sign up here.
