Lately I’ve been thinking about how to bring magical attention to the most mundane, minuscule, everyday activities.

Some things stubbornly resist magical intervention (though I’ll keep trying to figure out how to apply magic to clearing out my email inbox, wiping my kid’s poopy butt and doing my taxes).

But you’d be surprised at how many mundane things open like a flower when you slow down and look at them with magic in your eyes.

For instance, I decided last week to approach my kid’s toys with a magical eye, and try to Marie Kondo them, which I thought would be impossible. Hold each of the 1000 tiny cars and bits of playdoh in my hand and decide which of them bring joy?! But my four year old was totally down. I asked him, “Does this spark joy?” and he said, “What’s joy?” and we went from there.

What is the most mundane thing that you could approach with an eye towards creative magic? 

Maybe this sounds like a glib question but I’m for real! Can you do your taxes with magical intent? Let’s do some brainstorming about how that might work. We can use one of my favorite tools: the stupid solutions brainstorm. It is what it sounds like: we brainstorm as many stupid ideas as we can, and we relish in the stupidity, we embrace it. The stupider, the better. I’ve done it on all kinds of things (including truly impossible problems like gun violence but that is a topic for another day) so let’s try it on this:

STUPID SOLUTIONS FOR HOW BORING IT IS TO DO YOUR TAXES

+ Fill out tax forms with a feather quill and ink
+ Fill them out with invisible ink, mail them in to the IRS with a matchbook and instruct them to hold the forms over a lighted candle for the writing to appear
+ Use numerology to determine the magical significance of your gross income
+ Do your taxes in a wizard hat
+ Do them by the light of the full moon
+ …and naked
+ Get your 1099 in a foreign language and try to fill it out
+ Fill it out with your left hand

I’d love to hear your ideas, for magical taxes or anything that seems impossible to enjoy.