My Evolved Why: Creative Lives That Are Good On The Inside
Why do you do what you? It’s a complex question, with an answer that is rarely straightforward. And sometimes, that answer changes.
This past year, I’ve felt a slight but persistent shift in my work. The signs have been everywhere - from my inspiration pointing in new directions, to resistance to parts of my old work, to a content rut stretching out over months.
I wrote about this evolution of my work in a blog post about navigating the messy middle of building my business. And in that post I wrote that I would spend much of my summer trying to figure it out. Well, here I am, it’s the end of summer and what do you know, I figured it out.
My why through the ages
To give you some context, I want to go back for a moment. Back, because while my work indeed has evolved, there are threads stretching all the way back to the beginning.
When I started blogging in 2016, it was to share my year of facing my creative fears. At that time, I wasn’t very familiar with the concept of a why, so I didn’t formulate one. But if I think back, it was probably something like this: fear shouldn’t stop us from our creative dreams.
My challenge then was that self-doubt and fear of failure was keeping me creatively blocked. While I in periods got a lot of words written, my procrastination was bad and writing was an anxious process.
Fast forward a couple of years. I managed to face my fears, and my creativity was flowing. So much, in fact, that I was pushing myself too hard and was in a loop of overworking, getting stressed and having to stop everything to recover.
This led me to start exploring slow living, better habits and embracing patience. I started dreaming of a life where I didn’t have to keep my creativity stuffed into my evenings and weekends, but could make a living on it. And so my why changed into: a slow and creative life is possible.
Fast forward again. I had now started my coaching business, and I was going deeper into supporting creatives. One recurring theme in my work was that of helping my clients find their unique inner creative paths, and I started writing about that. I still held onto a slow creative life as my why, but I proclaimed on my website: your creative path exists inside of you.
What does these whys have in common? Well, they’re all focused on the behind the scenes experience of creativity. They’re about creating in a way that is effective, that moves you forward, creating brilliant projects, but it’s not just that. It’s about creativity that doesn’t just look good from the outside, but feels good on the inside too.
My evolved why
I went into this summer knowing my why had shifted. I had left behind a slow and creative life as my guiding light, and I didn’t know what was there in its stead. But there were all these signs. I was drawn to complexity, nuance and conversations. I was tired of my curated Instagram photos, and slow living had started to feel too packaged up and staged. I grew weary of the aspirational. I craved depth, I longed for what felt real.
One thing kept returning over and over again, and I wrote it down on a piece of paper and pinned it to the board next to my desk: more life, less lifestyle.
These were surface level signs of my why. The things I had grown tired of related to how things look from the outside. Curated photos. Showing a slow lifestyle. Because I wasn’t tired of living slow. I was tired of the idea of slow living as a concept, of the dreamy aesthetic, of romanticising life, of being aspirational. I partly blame Youtube for this, where I find the niche to be a lot about that beautiful appearance. That’s not how slow living started for me. Sure, I fell in love with the dreamy lifestyle too, but really, I pursued it to find a more balanced, calm way of creating and living. In other words, not how a slow and creative life looks from the outside, but how it feels on the inside.
I always come back here. Behind the scenes, to the messy process, to making sense of this beautifully complex thing we call creativity. To finding processes and habits that work and are joyful. To understanding your own vision, creative dreams and values, away from what the world expects from you. To building helpful and supportive mindsets. So that you can do the creative work you want to do, and do it in a way that is fulfilling, balanced and joyful.
That’s my why. Building creative lives that are good on the inside.
Why it matters
A lot of our world of creativity is about the outward look on it. How precise your skills are, how many admire you on social media, how many steps you’ve climbed on the ladder of creative success. And that’s where much of the advice for creatives exist. Courses on photography techniques and social media strategies and getting your book published compete for your attention.
There is less about everything that exist outside of the public eye, yet makes all the difference for whether you make your projects or not. Because the truth is, good skills won’t make a happy, thriving creator.
I’ve worked with so many skilled creatives who feel lost. I’ve admired my clients’ art, yet they’ve not been able to see their own brilliance for lack of confidence. I’ve worked with creatives who are great, yet that greatness never comes out because they don’t trust, believe in or understand their own creative process.
This is where my work exists. Behind the scenes, with everything that makes a creative life work and work well. In the knowledge you need about creativity that isn’t just camera angles and brush strokes and marketing strategies.
And why? Because I want you to make those projects you dream of. I want you to have a creative life. And I want you to enjoy it.
What it means
A why is all the way up there with values and lofty visions. It’s abstract, and the application of it can take many directions. So what does it actually mean for what I talk about and help creatives with?
Honestly, the changes are quite small. This is rather a deepening, something that ties together and makes sense of many of the topics that I already talk about. Calm, balanced and joyful processes, seasonal planning, inner creative direction and creative confidence. Helping creatives make the projects they dream of.
Mainly it’s a new lens I see my work through. New associations, a slight shift in style, heading away from the outward look on creativity and into the messy reality of it. I’m stretching out my calm, warm hand to guide you through the real challenges and towards a better way of creating.
To reflect that shift, I’ve done some tweaks. I’ve redesigned my website. I’ve rethought my content ecosystem. And that untethered, drifting and searching feeling I’ve felt this past year has been replaced by a clear, grounded and fulfilled one.
You could say it’s good. You know, on the inside.
