The Story Of How I’m Redefining My Creative Identity
Ever since I started blogging in 2016, I’ve shared my creative journey through writing. It’s what I fell in love with, and it’s what I’ve built my online presence around. I’ve shared my struggles and what I’ve learned along the way in hope of helping and inspiring other creatives in their journeys.
I’ve always identified myself primarily as a writer in my creative life. That is, until I started coaching and things shifted in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated.
Coach first, writer second
When I decided to start building a creative business, coaching other creatives felt like the natural path. I had written so much about creative work and mindsets, and helping people one to one felt like an extension of that.
So I went ahead and tested the waters with a couple of clients, which confirmed what I had suspected - I loved it. The fears I had battled calmed down and I launched my creative coaching business in January this year.
As I did so, I started presenting myself online as a coach first, a writer second. It’s not something I contemplated much, I just thought it made sense. Coaching would be the income generating thing, so from a marketing point of view it should come first, shouldn’t it?
I made my seasonal plan for the year, and establishing myself as a coach surfaced as a big area of work. So this spring, that’s what I began doing. I wrote blog posts that were related to how I coach, and I wrote a little bit less about stories from my own journey. I started showing up more as a coach on Instagram. I mentioned my own creative work less.
And something felt off.
A nagging feeling
A couple of things happened when I began calling myself a creative coach. I started feeling odd writing about my experience of building a business. Ultimately I did it anyway, but I felt like I shouldn’t. I tried to incorporate more tips and advice into my Instagram captions, which gave me a block around the whole thing. I don’t know if it’s connected, or if it’s just the algorithm doing its thing, but since around the time of starting my business, my engagement and reach on Instagram has dropped.
During spring, a nagging feeling kept showing up, a feeling like I was losing something. It was a feeling that I had sensed when I had contemplated coaching earlier and it had made me hesitate. But I’d never been able to really pin down what it was I was unsure about, because coaching also really appealed to me.
What I did know was that I was drawing further away from the role of a creator and closer to the role of an expert. I’ve always resisted that role in my creative life, and I haven’t been entirely sure of whether it’s been because of fear or preference. Now I cringed at the thought that I’d have to show up as a coach if I’d be a podcast guest, and I noticed I was heading away from the lifestyle topics I’d increasingly wanted to write about.
At times it made me wonder if coaching really was for me. But then I would have a coaching call with a client and I would rediscover how much I enjoyed it. For a while I’d feel certain that I was going in the right direction, before the nagging feeling returned and the loop started over again.
Considering my creative identity
During a recent conversation with a client, we talked about personal branding and presenting yourself to the world in a way that feels right and true to you. After the call I kept thinking about it and eventually my mind turned to what had changed since I started being Elin, creative coach rather than Elin, writer. And there it was, finally. The nagging feeling that had eluded me for so long.
It wasn’t the coaching itself I was sceptical about, it was the role, the identity of a coach. It was what I think I have to be to be a good coach, or at least seen as one. Because of how coaching itself is designed - with the client’s journey rightfully in focus - I had picked up the belief that that was how I had to show up in my creative life now. As someone who supported and didn’t take up too much space myself. Who didn’t share as much about my lifestyle and creative journey. Doing so even felt inappropriate.
This is a virtue that comes up in all caring roles. The nurse, the mother, the therapist. You dial down your own needs to give room for someone else’s. In the work itself it’s relevant and good, but it can easily become an identity too. You start shrinking and depriving yourself and doing it with a sense of pride.
As a recovering people-pleaser, it’s all too familiar. In fact, my creative life has been an important part in learning that my voice matters, that I too am allowed to take up space. And there I was, seeing my free role as a writer slipping away.
Writer first, coach second
Just like my people-pleasing tendencies, I’ve always been a good student. I love to learn and even if I don’t like to think of myself that way, I’m prone to looking for a blueprint to follow. In this little space online that I know and love, I don’t see many who does coaching or teaching as their secondary thing. If they do other work, they do it on the side. So that’s the only model I thought was available.
Yet the more I think about it, the surer I become. I don’t want to be a coach who writes, I want to be a writer who coaches. It’s not that I’m scared of the role as an expert, it’s simply that I prefer the role of a creator. It feels more joyful and authentically me.
I love storytelling. I want to share my journey and lifestyle and perspectives. I want my main focus to be on creating content around that. To inspire people to pursue a slower and more creative way of living. But I also want to coach creatives.
I’m not sure what all of this means yet. But what is clear is that the way I think about my creative work will change and my priorities will shift as well. I’m going to keep building up my coaching, but I’m also going to pursue my writing and photography as crafts in themselves again, not just as supporting actors. Who knows, maybe I’ll even add photographer to how I describe myself.
I believe so strongly that we all have define our own roles, in life and in our creative work. We can’t just take a blueprint and expect it to fit us precisely, because we’re all different and it’s in our differences that we shine the brightest. It’s when we speak with our most authentic voices that people listen. It’s when we make up our own roles and rules that we can be the happiest.
Now I just have to apply those beliefs to myself and my creative life.
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