This module explores containers as seasonal, emotional, and logistical scaffolding to help us sustain creative practice. In my work, I use containers as a flexible metaphor for:
- Forms that hold complexity, rather than flattening it
- Designs that make space for emotion, memory, or contradiction
- Rituals, routines, or technologies that support ongoing processes
Here, for example, are published essays on a variety of time containers:
- #79: How to Design a Deep Work Sprint
- #61: How to Design a Sabbatical
- #59: Seasons of Delivery vs. Data Collection
- #85: How to design a minimum work season
The idea was inspired by an essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (1986), in which Le Guin reframes the origins of culture and fiction not around weapons (the “hero’s journey”) but around containers—tools used to carry rather than conquer. She suggests that storytelling has long served as a method of holding and organizing the messy, relational, nonlinear aspects of life. The carrier bag becomes a symbol of both survival and narrative possibility, offering an alternative to dominant, patriarchal story structures.
Reading Notes
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (1986)