“Doubt never announces itself with loud footsteps or broken doors; it slips quietly into the room, carrying the dust of old memories, unfinished healing, and fears you believed you’d already outgrown. It knows precisely where you’re tender, exactly where to press, and how to make you question the very ground you stand on.” – Cyndi Stuart
When you’re a kid, you can be anything.
When you’re five, it’s cute if you want to be a doctor, artist, mom, Arctic explorer, and rock star. It’s one for each weekday, and then you can take the weekends off, right?
All it takes to make new friends is to show them what you just pulled out of your nose.
It’s okay to say things like “I don’t know”, or to change your mind. One day, you can want to be a Michelin chef, and another day, an astronaut.
You have freedom, encouragement, and options in abundance.
In fact, when I was still in pre-adolescence, I remember feeling the same way.
And why not?
I loved to write stories, put on plays with my cousins, tend to my own little garden after school, and “rescue” bugs that had fallen into my grandparents’ swimming pool.
Enter: the corruption of adolescence.
Then something happened, and I suppose it happened gradually.
As I started to move from my pre-teen middle school years into high school, people started to ask the “what do you want to do when you grow up” question a lot more seriously.
Now, it wasn’t cute to have five answers. It was actually an existential problem.
Now, I had to choose classes. I had to write college applications that indicated my future plans. Most intimidatingly, I had to have an answer for everyone who asked me these questions.
Oh, and if the honest answer was “I don’t know”? You better believe I was about to have an entire audiobook’s-worth of unsolicited advice dumped on my already-overwhelmed head.
The overwhelm made me shrink.
I have no problem now diagnosing my seventeen-year-old self as a diehard people-pleaser.
Ultimately, my grades were fine (and actually kinda good if I do say so myself), but I was still afraid I had fundamentally not done enough over the years. After all, I hadn’t cured cancer, gone to the moon, or the like.
I was struggling with making big decisions. So the pressure of “reality” forced me into feeling like everything must have its justification in my life.
Why was I studying?
To get good grades so high-ranking schools would accept me.
Why was I pursuing X extracurricular?
Because “clever students” pursue it, and I need to show I’m one of them.
Et cetera, and so on.
I asked the “why” question about creative writing too. However, for this thing that had been a passion since I was a mere pipsqueak, my justification was too weak.
“Because it’s what lights my soul on fire and cures all my heartaches” wouldn’t cut it for the college essays.
Well… that was stupid.
Ever since I was a little kid writing stories about my grandmother’s dog and tending to the plants in my garden, I was an artist.
There are no “if”s or “but”s about it.
It’s who I was at my very core, and for some reason, I sought to deny it so I could turn myself into someone I thought the rest of the world wanted.
What I thought I should be is still unclear, but it mostly involved not doing the things I actually liked because I thought the friction of pursuing things that didn’t “set my soul on fire” would somehow make me more worthy of success.
#1: Choosing to suffer didn’t make me more worthy.
Since that time in my life, I have been on the slow, humbling path of creative recovery, gradually growing back what I tried to squash during those years with the help of figures like Rick Rubin(The Creative Act: A Way Of Being) and Julia Cameron(The Artist’s Way), and learning so much about myself in the process.
The biggest lesson for me, however, has been to stop choosing suffering for suffering’s sake.
With some introspection and willingness to explore different options, it’s entirely possible (some might even say inevitable), to eventually stumble upon that much-coveted ikigai. That is, you will find the convergence of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at.
#2: Listen to your jealousy.
Now, this path was not paved with good intentions I’m sorry to say.
In fact, a lot of times, I find change is fueled by feelings like anger and jealousy, which tell us “something is missing here”, and “they have what I’m missing”.
Being an artist is really about how you live your life, and prioritizing creativity regularly.
If you find yourself jealous over the extent to which others are able to publicly express themselves creatively, or jealous because they actually have creative projects they’re working on, then maybe you should start working on something too.
Your jealousy is telling you what you want your life to look like.
Listen.
#3: There doesn’t have to be a “point” for you to start exploring.
Of all the best things that have happened in my life, few emerged from a clear “plan”, in which there was a predetermined “reason” for every minute spent.
In fact, I think that kind of spontaneity is part of what makes life beautiful.
“Wanting” to write a short story, “wanting” to wear your clothes differently, “wanting” to try a new recipe, “wanting” to listen to a new genre of music, and even “wanting” to try out a life in which you are an artist is enough.
It doesn’t always have to be about how much money you will make doing it, or how “aesthetic” it will look on your Instagram story.
Do it because you want to. Wanting to is enough.
The Courage To Be Like A Kid Again
There is a quote attributed to Deepak Chopra that goes, “The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.”
It means that to be an artist, you also have to live like one, and apply that creativity to embodying the identity of who you want to be.
For me, that has meant tuning into those expansive, hopeful dreams of Little Me, and asking, “Wait…how can I make her excited about the life I’m building?”
In doing just that, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that a life of a scientist-artist-author-explorer actually is possible for me.
In fact, it’s a lot more accessible than I once imagined.
Thought To Action
- Pause and Write Your “Failure Archive”: List three things you tried that didn’t go as planned this year. Don’t fix them. Instead, just name them and how they made you feel.
- Reframe Effort as Evidence: Track one kind of effort for two weeks (reading time, daily creative minutes, meaningful talks). Let the action be the metric, not just the outcome.
- Create a “Growth Pause”: Pick one thing you’ll do less of (doomscrolling, chores as avoidance). Put a boundary around it and note what space that creates for something nourishing.
- Rediscover Joy in the Small and Slow: Read one short piece of writing without pressure—no speed goals, no expectations.
- Set One “Next Try Intent”: Choose one thing from your failure archive and decide a small, doable step you’ll try next quarter — no perfection, just continuation.
Sources
No external sources were used for this post.
Leave a Reply