I didn't know how important crafts were until I became a bitcoiner.

When I was a child, all I required to be content and quiet for hours was a pair of scissors and a sheet of paper. It didn't matter, I could sit down anywhere and my attention was totally captured by what I could create or destroy with my hands.

Humans have this innate fascination for manipulating tools to birth something new into existence. It is our secret to survival. But along the way, at least in my experience, the small, everyday usefulness of this ability gets squashed beneath the pressures of making a way in the modern world.

When I finished school, I was under the impression that beyond college, I was engaged in the professional world and all of my work would, therefore, be important. If I had any value to offer it would be in the domain of the skill I learned - academic writing. And if I was to apply myself, I would have no time for piddling around with paste and paper, zines or poems. I could not rhyme when there was so much reasoning to do. I became convinced, due to the poor training I received in college about the real world, that the game of life was at odds with my natural inclinations and I would have to work harder and do things I did not enjoy just to survive.

I had a bleak outlook on the future, and this, of course, did not inspire me to create anything for the sake of art, besides a few desperate poems. My art supplies were boxed up with the rest of my childhood memories and left to dust.

I denied myself this beautifully human gift because I couldn't justify its importance.

Then, I got a new education.

Someone who is very dear to me would not stop ranting about bitcoin (my husband). I let him carry on with his computer nerd hobby for three years before I ever started to listen. And I listened in the first place because it was impossible to deny the evidence of his life improving in every way as he was getting closer to this thing. When I admitted that I might be interested, he sat me down in front of Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert on the Keiser Report.

My new education unfolded over the course of the next year, during a global pandemic. I let go of all that I thought I knew, and it was easier to do it when the disaster that was the covid response unraveled everything.

My understanding of bitcoin restored me to the version of myself that I like the best, the person who believes it's worth the effort to try. I began to see that the future is worth it. I rediscovered truth and value. I came out of the game that I didn't want to play anyway. And I had idle hands and idle time. I started crafting again, just small things. I displayed drawings on the walls of my home, and I didn't need a reason for it. I got my hands into clay, something I always wanted to do, and shaped it into trinket bowls with happy faces, and gave these to my friends just because I could. It was fascinating to rediscover my gift. It was liberating to let myself enjoy it. I surprised myself with delight at the work my hands could do.

sketches on display at Pleb Lab_ (left), my handmade pottery collection (right)

Because of bitcoin, I allow myself to live artistically. My belief in the sacred act of self expression in alignment with the natural order of the universe has never wavered, but the mountainous volume of fake value that suffocates truth almost destroyed it.

My arts and crafts may not be important in the grand scheme, it will never be a matter of life or death, but it's a chance for me to engage with reality, to test my abilities, and to learn and grow from the result. It is a private world that belongs to me, and if I can successfully master that world, I can offer it to you, and then we can transact value in the greatest money ever invented.

So, I do pleb crafts.

I'm not creating the next big thing. I won't be selling any masterpieces. I won't be installed in great musuems, should those survive. I may not write America's next great novel. America isn't looking for a great novel anyway; it looks for the next great grovel (the subject that bends to conform to the current agenda). Instead, I'm looking around at the materials I have, using the things I know from experience, and honestly asking myself what problems I can solve to lead me into the next project.

Doing pleb crafts solves practical problems. If I continued to live as if the small things my hands can create don't matter/aren't worth the effort, then I would have never crocheted a protective jacket for my husband's cold storage device. I dare you to question the importance of that.

Pleb crafts is truly a beautiful thing. It's humble and it's honest. Because of that, it can grow. By letting myself discover where my hands are useful, reverently and daily, I may stumble into my greatest cause. I may lead others with me into a fulfilling practice of artistic expression, battling against the limitations of reality. But if not, that's okay, at least I get a t-shirt out of it.

Catch me in the near future with a new pleb crafts workshop. Bring your girlfriends, and I'll tell them why bitcoin is worth it.