Gotta start somewhere!

For the longest time, I’ve had this necessity to do something about the wild and burning energy that was building within me. It was a slow, but lingering force that kept popping up in my life without a clear pattern or sequence to help me identify it. Most times, I could just ignore it: after all keeping up with life, just in itself, isn’t exactly a walk in the park. I was busy, I kept busy, and I never stopped to look back or let things catch up to me. But when it did, I would be reminded of its perpetual presence.

This “energy” is why I’m starting this blog right now, with this post. It took me a long time to really understand what it was, but I think I’ve got it now:

I need to create.

Creating has always been a big part of my life. Whether that be through music, art, assignments, or writing I’ve always loved the creative process. It’s really all a big puzzle – take what I have to spark the idea and then acquire the necessary pieces (in the form of knowledge, skill, experience, etc.) to execute it. I absolutely love it, and it gives me life. But for the past few years, I’ve been putting a stopper on my creative expression. With school getting more academic and the pressure to do well in these rigorous courses taking up most of my time, I hardly ever had the resources to invest in my creativity. I never had enough time, and even on the rare occasion that I could spare a few hours, I would be too tired to let my creativity roam freely.

But these circumstances changed when I hit a wall. Winter of 2017, I had fallen into a depression deeper than any of my previous episodes. In hindsight, I realize that it was a culmination of all the important things that I’d outrun catching up to me… at once. It was a tough time to go through, and in some senses I’m still working through it now. But strangely enough, there was a lot of good that came out of it too. During the time that I was forced to take a break from school, I spent most of my time letting my creativity flow… out of necessity. It was the only way I knew to keep sane: I needed to create, I needed to express. I wrote poems to help myself process the spinning chaos of my thoughts and painted pictures to take my mind off of the world. To some, that may seem like work, but to me it was liberation. It reminded me that I was capable of doing things; that I was worth something.

Now, I’m at a place where I don’t need to be creating for survival but I want to make it an intentional part of my life. Why? Because I would hate to go back to where I was seven months ago, and creating will, at the very least, keep me from losing my voice.

I wanted to start this blog as a way of doing just that: retaining my voice. I want it to be a place where I can share my thoughts and experiences with others. And quite frankly, that last part, “share… with others” scares the crap out of me because I’m not really one for spilling my life story to the world. But in the past few months, I’ve learned that sharing is such a constructive process. Opening up has helped me heal, faster than I ever would’ve struggling on my own and it brings the people that I love closer to my heart. And when I’m on the listening end, I am filled with so much encouragement and respect for those that share a parts of their lives with me.

So this is my first step to tackling my need for creativity and fellowship. It scares me and I’m nervous, but I’m also excited see where this goes. Because, you know what? Each moment is too precious to waste away worrying about how things will turn out. We all just have to start somewhere, and pave our paths from there.

Here’s to my beginning!