Greetings! Last week, we smudged our way through the screens of perception, those cloudy “note to self” that clarity is an intention, perception is negotiated, and when you touch something, you leave a little part of yourself behind. After all that squinting and adjusting your vertical hold, it feels like it’s a good day to step back outside for some creative tinkering. Riverside’s spring-like winter conditions make this a great day to engage with this week’s creative nudge: a pebble.
I get my ideas about what to use for our creative focus from many different places. As I share in this column, GenAI tools help me brainstorm objects that have not appeared in previous columns, sometimes people share their ideas, and sometimes the subjects suggest themselves.
This week’s pebble nudge came to me as I shook debris out of my shoes after taking a dirt path shortcut that runs through my suburban neighborhood. I can ignore a lot of things in life, but not a pebble in my shoe. That demands standing attention: a foot lifted; an unceremonial return of the pebble from my shoe to its earthly home base. A shaky reshoeing. In this way, pebbles are excellent teachers. A pebble in your shoe takes priority over anything else happening around you.
Pebbles are everywhere, making them an easy nudge for your creative contemplation this week. Are pebbles just rocks that waited? Time did its slow, patient work—breaking, smoothing, rounding—until something too big to move becomes small enough to hold. How I wish my problems followed the same evolutionary path. They are nature’s long game.
Besides shoes, pebbles find their way into many familiar stories. There’s something comforting in that. Also, annoying…Princess-and-the-Pea annoying. The tiniest thing can disrupt your entire program.
But disruption can be a good idea too, which Aesop shares with his story about a thirsty crow trying to drink from a partially filled vessel. His big beak can’t reach the little layer of water at the bottom. So, he devises a pebble-tastic plan. He drops pebbles into the drink one by one, raising the water level until his beak can reach.
Lesson? No single pebble solves the problem. The solution is accumulation. Patient effort plus gravity. Not so different from my creative practice at times.
Pebbles show up in design too. Thoughtfully placed, they make beautiful hardscapes—paths, borders, drainage. Water wise and wisened by water.
Randomly placed, they wedge themselves into shoes and halt progress. Hikers, joggers, stroller-pushers—we all negotiate these little obstacles with our bodies, constantly adjusting balance and gait without thinking much. Until, of course, we must think about it. Lesson? Context matters!
Let’s take several minutes this week to give pebbles attention as interesting objects instead of a nuisance or obstacle in our path. Use one or more of these nudges to explore their (and your) creative side:
Your Pebble: Hold a pebble. Really hold it. Make your hand sweaty. Notice temperature, texture, weight. Is it smoother on one side? What’s the story here? Try sketching it or writing about it without using any concrete references.
Footnote: Walk slowly with a pebble placed under your foot (inside a sock or shoe). Notice how your body compensates. Try to think about anything else but that pebble! Write a few lines about what changes when comfort disappears.
Pebble Percussion (Sound) Tap two pebbles together. Or shake a handful in a can; Pringles is not a corporate sponsor but those do nicely. Drop them one at a time onto different surfaces. Hit record or simply listen.
Crow Brain: Use pebbles to solve a small physical problem: weighing something down, measuring time, marking a path, stabilizing an uneven object. Reflect on how many it took—and why one is never enough.
Pocket Archive: Carry a pebble for the day or a few hours. Later, write a short inventory of everywhere it went with you.
Pebbles give us a (small) place to pay attention. They remind us that creativity sometimes starts as a mild irritation. Perhaps it is a good idea to take a second when something small demands it. Bend down and pick one up the next time they’re underfoot. Even the tiniest parts of nature have done a lot of work to get here—and sometimes, they’re exactly what your creative path requires.
This column was written with the help of ChatGPT 5.2, used as a creative collaborator in my ongoing exploration of how humans can stay human in an era of unprecedented technological change.
