Who has the corner on creativity and how the fuck do we share that shit? There are insane amounts of professionals and self proclaimed gurus of creativity and self expression online trying to sell everyone and their mother classes on things like releasing your inner child. When did we all become so obsessed with the idea that there are only a finite amount of ways to be creative in our lives and why do so many of us put our unshaking faith in these strangers?

I hate seeing the word creativity written out for how much I’ve thought, said, or written about it in the last week alone, but it also has been the only thing that I have thought about seriously in that time. It’s kept me awake at night, it’s made me stare at an empty google doc for an embarrassing amount of time, and it has made me rethink how well I know all the settings on my camera. A friend told me once that the only niche thing you ever really know anything about is yourself and I can’t tell you how much that truly made me rethink my own relationship to the idea of my personal creativity. For better or worse, adjusting my life to live the way I’ve always wanted to has been tougher than anticipated. I had so many expectations about how I was going to go about this and how I was going to set a course for myself, and the only thing that has pushed me further has been the countdown to a self imposed deadline on my phone. The count officially hit less than 500 days recently and that freaked me out the morning I woke up to 499 days left. I am TERRIFIED. 

There also seems to be a time limit placed on most of us as to when we are allowed to engage in our creative endeavors. There is pressure to begin the work at such a young age, to find what you’re passionate about and good at early so you can capitalize on it as soon as possible. As a person who’s always been creative in a multitude of ways, it’s frustrating having people see your want for more creative outlets as flighty episodes with no “results”.

Recently I’ve been struggling with what it looks like to be creative and create in my life. Thirty seems to be the year of really considering who I am and what I’m doing, but especially now that I have committed myself to this (as in, this piece, this novel I’m writing, this guitar sitting in my closet, this dream, etc.) it feels like there are so many marketed creative stratagems to for creatives to make money off their art as long as its trendy and easily digestible. While making a living off all of that is the goal, seeking out any advice centered around those kinds of ideas feels inauthentic and all it does is feed into the capitalist machine that would sooner stifle all that energy. I suppose the eternal question then is who decided that art must be gatekept and is their grave a public restroom? 

I seek to be one of those people who just lives! Wakes up and chooses themselves! Is poetry, but also an unholy terror! Who are you, who am I, why are we here and not laying out in a grassy field contemplating the realities of sunburn! Expectation continues to be a thieving bitch who keeps me held back and I intend on doing something about that. Less than 500 days, and I can commit to actively seeing the art in the daily in order to move forward.