The return of creativity

I had good intentions of writing. I ended 2024 with ambition and passion and a lot of drafts in my draft folder.

As 2025 emerged, as my draft folder dwindled, as I slowly felt the life drain out of me and my sparkle disappear, I noticed I’d stopped creating.

The copy of my manuscript sat in a word document, half edited, half complete. I hadn’t written a new blog post in weeks, could barely muster up a coherent instagram caption.

For someone who primarily communicates through words, this felt like a new experience for me. As I tend to do when I spend an extended period of time not creating, I spent an extended period of time sitting. Watching the spider crawl across the floor. Watching the sun creep across the sky.

I spent time dissociated from my body, which happens, and promised myself I would return. I always do. My spark, my creativity, my passion, would reemerge.

I waited. I watched. I felt my life narrow until it got small, until I felt the aching desire to inhale and found myself gasping for breath. It’s like the moment coming off the ventilator, where there is sputtering and choking and the constricting feeling of not being able to get enough oxygen and then… air.

That’s what the return of my creativity felt like.

It also stood as a reminder for me to trust the seasons. The cyclical rhythm, of everything exists in me too.

To arrive in my own creativity, to embody my own space in the world again, I needed time. I needed breath. I needed to watch the spider crawl across the floor and the sun across the sky. I needed the medication, and the meditation.

In survival times, they say non-essential functions are the first to go. Preserve life over all else. And, even when it gets very small and very shrivelled, I think hope is necessary for survival. And creativity, and passion, and the ability to make meaning and tell story. The ability to express what you want to express and feel good.

When it left, it didn’t stay gone. It was just taking new shapes. And when it returned, it felt like I’d been waiting for that breath.