Words: Secondhand Affection, aka Ari (@secondhandaffection)

Growing up, there was a single commandment that governed our household:

Do not create waste.

Not just in the physical sense but existentially, too.

Don’t waste time.

Don’t waste money.

Don’t waste space.

And above all: don’t come into possession of anything you don’t know what to do with.

Time, money, attention, affection... None were to be spent frivolously, and none given

unless deserved. Space was currency. Rationed like food in a war.

Our home is a modest three-bedroom townhome, with all the characteristics and emptiness of a waiting room. Bare walls that felt allergic to memories. No photos. No room for expression. Lived in, but never loved. My parents weren’t artists. They didn’t appreciate or care for art. They were tidy people in a tidy house. And year after year that I lived in that house, nothing changed. No portraits. No memorabilia. It was essentially a life without footprints, one where every memory was deemed too indulgent.

Against these odds, my sister and I grew into our creativity like weeds between pavement cracks. Unwelcome yet persistent. We tried to make things; art, fictional stories, little handmade gifts... But no matter what it was, they all met the same fate: Glanced at with a forced smile or a curt nod. Then boxed, buried, or tossed.

It didn’t take long for her to stop making altogether.

But I didn’t. I was stubborn and I remained enamored by art. In a way, I was in pursuit of something forbidden, and the prospect of it being taboo only made me all the more eager to chase it.

There was something about creation that made the world feel less cruel. Drawing a flower, sculpting a smile. The idea that something that was conjured up in someone’s mind could be birthed into reality. It made me feel alive and excited, making something that otherwise wouldn’t exist without me. But every single time, I was reminded where I lived: A house where sentiment was a liability, and every object made was a future burden. Even now, the echo in my head stays constant:

“Don’t create waste.”

So, I pivoted. Eventually, I turned to graphic design. With my refusal to give up art, it was the only space I could create in where I didn’t feel like a nuisance; for digital art required no space. I created graphic art, posters, shirts, mockups... All of them still conceptually tangible, just not born into the physical plane. And for a while, that was fine.

But as time went on, still, something in me itched. Each time I wandered into a gallery (whether digital or physical) and gazed at the exhibitions, I felt like an exile. A voyeur.

It wasn’t envy, per se.

It was grief.

Grief for the things I never made because I had nowhere to put them.

Grief for the knowledge that I was held back in my creativity for no real reason.

And like clockwork... That voice. Always that voice. Chiding and cold.

Don’t create waste.

In my household, to make something physical was to offend the space around it.

When you grow up in a home where nothing is sacred, making something tangible becomes an act of rebellion. Because to conceive something, to give it weight, mass, and presence, is to give it a need. It needs storage and space.

It needs to have a defined purpose.

It needs someone to care.

And what if you can’t provide that? What if your creation is too inconvenient to love? Too useless for the everyday life of a family?

I would think, ‘I care!’

But sometimes, being the only one who cares isn’t enough.

And how could I, knowing the fate of everything else I’d ever made, create something with intention while knowing destruction was inevitable? Wasn’t that the same as declaring my art meaningless?

Was I doomed to be confined to one medium when I craved giving life to my creations?

That thought followed me and bled into every moment I created. I’d hear my voice and theirs blur together whenever I sketched yet another logo in a half-empty café, every time I stared at a blank artboard on Illustrator at 4AM, every time I had discussions for business cards... It was constant.

And one day, I accidentally stumbled upon an answer.

Something called “Game of Shrooms”, a local portion of a global scavenger hunt for art. The premise: artists make pieces, hide them around the city, and strangers find them.

One day. One shot.

No gallery. No storage. No permanence.

Just creation and release.

It struck me like a fever.

Within the next hour, I was driving to my nearest arts and crafts store. I bought five and a half pounds of air-dry clay, brushes, paints and sculpting tools. This might’ve been an incredibly foolish idea because I didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t touched clay in over fifteen years. But, for the first time in what felt like forever, the voice in my head was silent.

And in that silence, I worked.

I stayed up late, hunched over my kitchen table, for a week straight. Hungry, running of little sleep and too many red bulls, sculpting seven little mushroom-inspired pieces. I painted through the night with an open and untouched bag of Lays and the sound of some irrelevant TV show running as background noise. For once, I wasn’t making “portfolio work.” I wasn’t thinking about Instagram. I was making offerings. Gifts. Proof that I existed.

I was tired, I was exhausted. But I felt alive in a way I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

I hid them in various corners of the city: Some of my favourite coffee shops, neighborhoods, lakes... Seven different places where I thought someone might stumble upon them and experience a spark. A moment of curiosity for the weird and unusual.

The doubts came, of course. They always do.

I gripped my steering wheel as I thought: What if no one finds them? What if no one cares? What if this was just a huge waste of time, effort, money and materials after all?

But I’d already made them. They existed now. And there was no turning back.

Later that day, once a dark shade of blue had begun to blanket the sky and city began to fall asleep for the night, I drove back to every location.

Only to find... Every single piece was gone.

No notes. No tags. Just absence.

I drove back to each spot in disbelief, expecting to see them sitting alone, ignored. But each spot was empty, as if they’d never been there at all.

And yet... I didn’t feel loss. I felt seen. For once, the story didn’t end with a trash bag at the curb. It ended with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, looked at what I made and thought: this isn’t waste.

That was when I understood: art doesn’t need to last to matter. What I created was no discarded, not trashed. It was taken. Chosen. Loved, perhaps.

And maybe nothing is permanent. Maybe that’s the point.