Last week someone lovingly told me that I was using the vastness of my creativity to procrastinate. To avoid being seen in what I actually desire. Or being rejected while sharing the truth of me.
I started laughing. And crying. Because, seeing myself in the mirror was as liberating as it was terrifying.
How human of me. How utterly human to want to be loved and not lonely. And how deeply frightening, that I was no longer oblivious to the more aligned route.
Contrary to how it may sound, this wasn’t a flash breakthrough. It was an imperfect arc of conversations, realisations and questions - over months (maybe even years), with many people - that finally came to a head on a regular Wednesday. With a beautiful woman seeing me through the screen. And me, raw from everything that was chafing and ready. Restless, for something to finally change.
The next morning - in front of an actual mirror - little insights started drizzling. I saw myself as a child. In the promotion of my work. In conversations with new connections and familiar faces too. I saw what I spent my time on and what made me frustrated. I felt the twitch of longing for what I really want to direct my energy to. How I want to be.
And I understood. Something that hadn’t been obvious before. That I was hiding behind my creativity - not within it as I have often caught myself doing. But suddenly, looking back, this pattern was part of my every choice and interaction.
Most of my life I’ve been a shape-shifter. Twisting and moulding to hold any shape that is presented. Not to please, but to be easier to accept, and take in. Torn between my contrasting instincts of personal expression and that of belonging and being seen. For me, it’s meant I’ve taken it upon myself to do other people’s work for them. Like a mama bird chewing her babies’ food. Making myself digestible and bite-sized. Always leading with what is easy to say yes to. Always fearing what will happen when I show up in all my whimsical complexity.
So now, I am taking inventory.
Of all the ways that I am trying to seep in instead of show up.
Of where I love my bendy nature and where it is sheltering me.
Of what resonates in my heart and what is “just” strategically sound.
I’ve always known myself to take refuge inside of my ideas. Snuggled within the process of creation. Cocooned in the making. Hands busy. Thankfully, I’ve learnt to tell apart - at least mostly - my hermit tendencies from the signals of my deep belief.
Hiding behind my ideas is different. I see it isn’t just masking as “the creative person” - having ideas en masse. But actually the choice to front and prioritise the things that I believe others may understand - or that they won’t turn away. All the while reserving my more authentic artistry for small spaces and closed notebooks.
Even writing this, I’m battling my desire to be general and not personal.
Ultimately, whatever means of disguise I’ve used, the opportunity has been the same. It was never about picking a niche, but rather about being courageous enough to not use my creative power to put off visibility. To not turn the quantity of my creations into a means of staying stuck in perpetual ideation. If I am using my ideas to distract myself from honing my craft and giving focus to what I truly care about - it’s not adaptability, it’s avoidance.
This is sticky. Translating what I saw into a pattern that is new. Into movement that brings me into light and helps me stay there. Daring to try even if I don’t know quite what it looks like to be a version of me that isn’t fitting around other people’s shape like grout.
Each day since, I’ve been looking at my work. How I distribute my time. What has worked before. Resonance - inside me and around me.
Breathing deeply. Closing circles that encourage my escape. Opening wider, those that can house me.
There is no gripping for efficiency. Certainly not comfort.
I’ve learnt that the undulations of creativity aren’t clear cut or predictable. It is a conversation between the idea, the practice and the form. With me, somewhere in the middle, herding the friction into movement (or stillness). And turning the featureless survival strategies and humming heartbeats beneath - into brave, focused choices. Actions that bring me closer to myself in the present, rather than trying to save me from the fears of my past.
It’s made me rewrite my expectations of what a creative life should be. Not everything is fluid. Nor fun. I need the ache and the doubt and the surprising bursts of aliveness to orient myself in the process of (my) creation. There is no skipping the tension and the contrast. They are as much the fuel as the engine.
I’ve looked at myself in the rearview mirror and remembered that the strategies I once chose to hide and to survive are not dumb. They are an excessive use of a talent I already possess. And my goal needn’t ever be to eliminate that capacity, but to understand when and where it is magic… and when it is a mask.
It is where I direct my compassion, not my shame.
I have walked in the fog day after day and experienced that the clarity I am looking for is in the movement itself. In accumulating enough experiences to understand. So I resist the urge to label or squeeze the diffuse into a frame. What truly helps is staying attuned to the pulse - the voice of what feels true - and letting it claim space one breath at a time.
Knowing that it doesn’t need to make sense, but trusting that it will.
Here, there is often a reflex to let go. Shed layers of responsibilities and expectations I’ve taken on. Putting my hands up to signal stop. No more.
And I often do.
But sometimes the most powerful space I make for myself doesn’t make me shake because I release my grip.
It doesn’t feel like abandoning something I love. A place of safety. I hesitate because I don’t know what that new place looks like. I tremble because I move towards committing more deeply to myself and the creations asking for a home through me.
In the end, that is how I know.
And how I move.
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