Of all the things I am grateful for about who I am, one of the greatest is this:
I am creative.
Not because creativity has made my life easier or turned every difficult experience into something beautiful. It hasn’t. But creativity has nearly always given me somewhere to go next.
It reminds me that whatever exists today does not have to be the final version. There may be another shape, another sound or another way to tell the story. Even when I cannot change what happened, I can still ask: What can I make from here?
I should be honest, though. There were a few years when I wasn’t making very much at all.
During those years, it was largely the responsibility of caring for Thomas and my dogs that kept my life moving. They needed food, exercise, veterinary care, attention and all the ordinary things animals need from the people who love them. They did not care whether I felt hopeful or inspired. They simply needed me to get up and show up.
Sometimes the thing that carries us through is not a revelation or a grand new beginning. Sometimes it is a horse waiting at the barn or a dog standing beside the bed.
They gave my days a reason and my weeks a structure when I didn’t have much energy left for imagining what might come next. I am deeply thankful for that. There are seasons when keeping another living thing safe and loved is more than enough creativity for one life.
But now, there is more.
These days, I have more ideas and projects than I could possibly handle. They seem to appear faster than I can finish them. Some become websites or essays. Some become music lessons, printables or half-filled notebooks. Some are still nothing more than a collection of thoughts waiting to find their form.
My newest project may be the most ambitious—and possibly the strangest.
I am writing an album of original music and imagining a series of videos to accompany it. The videos will live somewhere between a shadow-puppet show and animation: figures moving through light and darkness, creating a small theatrical world for each song.
I don’t know exactly how I am going to make all of it yet.
That is part of what I love about it.
The project requires me to learn things I don’t already know. I have to experiment, make imperfect attempts and solve each little problem as I reach it. Every song or image opens another door, and behind that door is usually another idea I had not considered before.
I may only make one album like this in my entire life.
Strangely, that thought does not make the project feel less worthwhile. It makes it feel more precious.
Not everything we create has to become a career, a business or a permanent part of our identity. We are allowed to follow an idea simply because it came looking for us. We are allowed to make one strange, difficult, beautiful thing and then move on to something else.
The value is not only in what we eventually finish. It is also in who we become while trying to make it.
After my marriage ended, I found myself in a place where I had to relearn who I was, who was this person I had become? Creativity gradually changed the question. Instead of continually asking who I was, I began thinking about who I wanted to become.
Every song, page, lesson and unfinished experiment has become a small piece of the answer.
These projects remind me that my life is not a waiting room. I am not waiting for another person to arrive before I begin decorating it, filling it with sound or giving it a story. I can make something simply because I want it to exist.
If you have lost touch with your own creativity, you do not have to begin with an album—or even with something you are good at. You might begin by asking:
- What did I once love making before I became responsible for everything else?
- What idea keeps returning, even though it may not be practical?
- What would I create if it never had to impress anyone or become anything more?
There were years when responsibility kept me alive. Now creativity is helping me feel fully alive again.
The things I create are mine.
But even more importantly, the world they are helping me create is mine, too.
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