Space to Create
When I was a kid, I used to create just to create. I had this need to create beautiful things just because I could. You could hand me any craft project big or small and I would figure it out with very little effort. I loved sewing, drawing, sculpting, crocheting, and literally any other creative endeavor I could get my hands on. One day my dad came home to our kitchen counter sanded, painted, and sealed, but it wasn’t just some boring mono-color paint job. Nope. Our new countertop had large white flowers overlaid on the red background because I was left in charge of it. This creative instinct had been in me since I was small and had been fostered by my family with gifts of art supplies and crafting projects.
The beauty of these childhood creations was the lack of comparison. Not to say it was never there. I do have memories of coloring while in daycare, where I would take creative liberties and add a sun or trees to my coloring pages. You know, the things obviously forgotten about during the coloring book production. Other children would color perfectly within the lines provided and get what felt like excessive praise for this ability to be so unimaginative. Could we not see that I was creating greatness here? But for the most part, throughout my childhood and even teen years, I just made things. I made them because to me creativity wasn’t just part of me, it was me.
Being creative, whether through a simple doodle or an extravagantly large painting on found materials, was my calm within any storm. I felt centered here and could create through my feelings of grief, anger, joy, and melancholy. Each of my strongly felt feelings gave me a different kind of creative fuel. I could use all my emotions as fuel because they felt true. In creativity, there was no judgment about the feelings, only an outlet.
And just like that one day it all stopped. It was like an appendage that was suddenly amputated. I couldn’t make beautiful things anymore. Honestly, I couldn’t even make ugly things. I couldn’t create. I have spent so much time trying to pinpoint the moment it all changed. Trying to get back to this place of pure creation with no other intention. Or even just space where I could make something that might erase the external world for just a moment.
I tried to diagnose the problem. Maybe it was because my life as some sort of volunteer expat was emotionally taxing. After that maybe it was the transition back to America that was just too overwhelming. But historically, creativity had been how I had processed emotions. Maybe it was because of a lack of access to my ever-expanding collection materials. Maybe it was because I couldn’t help but compare whatever I wanted to make to something already existing and was far more skillfully crafted. Maybe it was because I was an adult now and adult responsibilities did not leave time for these things.
I wrestled with all these possibilities for years. Over the last decade I’ve made a couple things here and there but never with the reckless abandon that came with regular creative practice. This week I spent every single day inside a pottery studio. Creating. Making. Feeling. Just being. Forms and ideas flowed freely. Creating felt like the safe space it once did a decade ago, and the puzzle pieces clicked into place.
It was no surprise to me that my creative desire came rushing back in this season where I have made a commitment to myself again. I used to laugh when people would talk about “finding themselves,” but it really did feel like I lost myself for a minute there. I caved under the pressures of life and let important pieces of my identity fall away in the misguided name of self preservation. Now, for the first time in years I am prioritizing what I want in life from education and career to hobbies and social circles. I have given my younger self who didn’t give a shit about meeting anyone’s expectations the space she was missing, allowing her to shine. And we are making again.