Why I curate small delights
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Welcome to my office. I work remotely and on virtual calls, people sometimes mention the books in my background. Fiction. Children’s literature. Vintage. Current curiosities. They don’t usually ask about what’s tucked between the books, on full display, or quietly living in the corners. They don’t know I call these my small delights. I invite you to look closer.
A stuffed Corgi in a unicorn costume, a real Corgi, or both? A top hat perched at the top of a wooden bookcase waiting for the right meeting, or the right magician? A Jiminy Cricket figure, or the small persistent voice that says you can become more than what others see? One piece of tile from a Portugal mosaic. A small piece of the full picture.
My mother’s bugle lives here too. My father bought it so she could call her children home from wherever we’d wandered. For me, it was summer evenings from the edges of the neighborhood creek. She would play Reveille and I’d come running. She’s almost 99 now and still plays it from time to time. Pure joy.
And then there is Snoopy. On shelves. On my desk. In LIFE magazine. Here is a beagle who lives in his own imagination and never apologizes for it. Who notices the changing seasons, a friend’s sadness, the first snow. Who finds joy in ordinary things and never stops playing, even when the world gets serious. Especially when the world gets serious. And my latest addition? The Banksy-style painting dear colleagues gave me when I shifted into the next chapter of work. Bold white strokes, outside the lines. An artist playing.
From this office, I’m grateful my work takes me into rooms I could only have imagined a few years ago. Think tanks. Global spaces. International coalitions advocating that human creativity and knowledge remain accessible and that the people who make it have a say in how it is shared and reused.
But I also carry quieter work here. The kind that isn’t about what I do, but who I am. What allows a person to remain the author of their own creative life inside systems that quietly eliminate the conditions where curiosity and creativity grow? Creative sovereignty. It is harder to protect than it sounds not because the threat is dramatic, but because it arrives gradually, disguised as convenience. And I ask this question because I sometimes feel the slow drift in myself. Away from imagination. From wonder. From creative confidence.
My small delights call me back. They are my Reveille when the path gets foggy and I need to remember that imagination is not naive. That wonder is not weakness. That a Corgi carries fairies. That a beagle can be a World War I flying ace. This is why I curate small delights.
This piece started as a contribution to Jason Collington's "Why I" series in Collington Index, Tulsa's free, weekly news digest.