8/23/2023
I have always loved expressing creativity. As a kid I would write stories and draw, and as I got older this creativity morphed and changed. I still (try to) write, I tend to draw little doodles and design logos and things, and I’ve dabbled in things like embroidery and scrapbooking.
It goes without saying that the past few years have been rough. I want to say that my life has never actually recovered from the pandemic- which is ironic because I’m writing this in bed while sick with COVID-19. But in a less literal sense, I haven’t felt quite like myself in a few years.
It feels like someone stole away from me the girl who was creative and ambitious and loved learning and doing things. Now I’m just a hollow person who scrolls on her phone all day whenever there’s nothing else I have to be doing. I still have hopes and dreams for my future, and hobbies that I have varying degrees of investment in, but I feel very disconnected from all of it, which is pretty disheartening.
Because of this, I have decided to go on a journey. I’m not exactly sure what to call it- maybe self-rediscovery? My hope is to reclaim the parts of myself that I have drifted from. One of these parts is my creativity. I’m determined to get back in my creative bag in the upcoming months.
It definitely won’t be easy. For one thing, I am a college student. I am in my senior year, and even though my workload isn’t too overwhelming, I have so many things I need to worry about, and it’s hard to fit in time to be creative. When I do have free time, I find myself so mentally exhausted that I just lay down and get on my phone (despite being aware that screen time is an energy taker, not an energy giver). It’s just a bad habit that I’m sure many people around my age can relate to. A third concern is that I have a hard time focusing. Specifically with writing, I get bad writer’s block and it’s hard for me to sit there and let myself get into the flow* if I’m not immediately getting words on the paper/screen.
This YouTube video helped me to start to think through these issues. I just discovered this YouTuber and so far I’ve enjoyed some of her videos about natural hair, self love and creativity, specifically her crocheting hobby. In this particular video, she discusses the importance of creativity and the therapeutic effects that it can have.
At the end of the day, even though it’s hard, I really want to get over myself and be creative again. I want to spend time writing, crocheting, embroidering, scrapbooking and whatever else piques my interest. One of the ideas I had recently is to create an art journal where each page or set of pages is sort of meditating on and visually representing some words that stuck with me/ meant something to me.
I will probably discuss this more in later posts, but I have a big problem with shame. It tends to cloud my judgment and affect everything I do. I find myself hesitant to do things I want to do because I feel like I’m not allowed to due to having done something wrong in the past, or being different from everyone else doing it in some way. I hope that my creativity can help me to not only work through these feelings of shame, but also to realize that I’m literally just a person like everyone else. I might make mistakes or be weird or cringe at times, but at the end of the day, that’s just life. I want to feel connected to other people and to nature and to art and to life again. After all, isn’t that what being human is all about?
* I feel like we all have a general concept of what “the flow” is, but I learned a lot about it from a book called Fearless Writing by William Kenower. We read it for one of my classes and I may do a whole post about it at some point, it’s just that good.
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