187. The Diaper Caddy
Daydreaming in my hospital room. Photo by Kate Sterlin
It’s an important lesson, and a liberating one too: You don’t have to have the perfect writerly cabin in the woods or some beautifully Zen set-up in the corner of your house. You can make yourself a toolkit, and you can bring it with you wherever you go.
In the past decade, I’ve spent countless hours dreaming about the ideal creative space, procrastinating on Pinterest, flipping through design magazines and coffee table books, and fantasizing about floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with one of those gloriously romantic rolling library ladders. But not all of us have a perfectly curated, luxuriously private workspace—and honestly I’ve come to believe it’s not a necessity, and maybe not even the ideal.
I just spent five weeks in confinement in a hospital room, which is arguably the least inspiring place. Between the fluorescent lighting, the incessant interruptions, the beeping of monitors, and the limited space, nothing about it makes you want to write the next great American novel, or to compose music or to break out a box of oil paints. Yet there’s a long lineage of artists and writers who, in the midst of illness and upheaval, did just that—from Henri Matisse, to Audre Lorde, to Charles Mingus, to Frida Kahlo. They used their limitations as a springboard and turned their circumstances into fodder for new creative pursuits.
Before I entered the hospital, I bought a gray felt diaper caddy, and I began to fill it. I tucked in an art book my mom gave me, and a novel and a coloring book too. I put in four journals, all for different purposes, and a pad of watercolor paper. I filled the pockets on the sides with my staples, like my favorite fountain pen, and also some things I don’t normally use, like colored pencils, paint brushes, and watercolors.
There were other things that weren’t as much tools, as things I used to set the mood, like a facial oil I really love, and a little vial of essential oil sent to me by a friend—it’s called goddess oil, and it smells like a dream. I wasn’t allowed real candles in the hospital, but another friend hooked me up with some very real-looking fake ones—made of actual wax, softly scented of vanilla, with a flickering LED light for a flame.
I placed the caddy on my beside table, within arm’s reach, and put it to use that first night in the hospital. It was the middle of the night, and I couldn’t sleep, worried about all that might go wrong in the coming weeks. But to my surprise, I didn’t reach for my usual journal and the fountain pen. Instead, I found myself painting a self-portrait: me dozing peacefully in a hospital bed, floating through a starry midnight sky, with the Manhattan skyline faintly visible in the background. I found it strange that I was drawn to try something I hadn’t done in years—I really hadn’t painted since I was a young child—but it was thrilling, and I wanted more. So I kept on, painting a new portrait every few days, so that by the time I left the hospital, I had a whole series of ten watercolor fever dreams.
It’s an important lesson, and a liberating one too: You don’t have to have the perfect writerly cabin in the woods or some beautifully Zen set-up in the corner of your house. You can make yourself a toolkit, and you can bring it with you wherever you go. Then, wherever you are, begin, create.
