We Were All Born Creative. Life Just Got In The Way.

I always say this and I truly believe it with every ounce of my being; I think we are all born creative. Every single one of us. Not some of us. Not the lucky ones who went to art school (maybe unlucky if you were born in an African household). All of us. I think about my childhood and all the things we did to keep time as children and whew ART, one key example is SUWE, I don’t want to digress lol.

What happens is that we grow up and go to school where we are forced to study science or law because we want to get high paying jobs. And somewhere between the first performance review and the fifth year anniversary and the comfortable salary, we trade the question "what can I make?" for "what is my role?" And we stop thinking of ourselves as creative people. We think of ourselves as our job titles instead.

I know because I did it too. For years, when someone asked me what I did, I told them where I worked. That was my answer. That was my identity. I didn't even notice how much of myself I had handed over to a company until 6am on April 2nd when they handed it back.

And even when the creative urge survives, even when some part of us still wants to make something, the job takes that too. Not maliciously. Just quietly. Through the exhaustion. Through the Sunday dread and the back to back meetings (this really could have been an email instead of a meeting) and the emails that never stop. Burnout doesn't just take our energy. It takes our imagination. By the time we get home there is nothing left to give to the things that actually feed you (literally even applies to actual food, I spent so much on Uber Eats last year).

Even before the layoffs, around 2021 when I had my spiritual awakening, I started searching my soul so deep because I desperately wanted to create. Create anything at all, I would legit comment on peoples artsy post “God please give me a talent” or “I’m so jealous of people with talents”. There was the most insane disturbance in my body to create, just did not know which medium.

Here is what I've come to believe: creativity is not a talent distributed to a chosen few. It is a muscle. And like any muscle, it doesn't matter which one you train first, once you start using it, everything else wakes up too.

My hands are suddenly very blessed.

Pottery woke up my eye for color and form. That woke up my love of film, I started documenting everything because the process felt too beautiful not to capture. Film woke up my writing/storytelling. Writing led to this blog. This blog might lead toward a book I've wanted to write for years without knowing it. I always say that I am not married to one creative medium regardless of how good I am at that medium.

And it didn't stop there. After pottery I picked up sewing, something I had told myself for years I simply could not do. I was wrong. Then knitting. Also wrong about that one. People have started saying there is nothing I cannot do with my hands and honestly I am starting to believe them.

I spent years thinking creativity was something other people had. Turns out I just hadn't unlocked it yet. One pottery class was the key and now I cannot close the door.

Turns out, I didn't sign up for a pottery class to become a potter. I signed up for a pottery class and became a creative. Those are two completely different things. A potter makes pottery. A creative makes everything.

I was at the Austin City Limits Festival last year and I met some new friends. When my friends introduced me, they called me a creative. Not my job title. Not what company I work for. A creative.

I felt more powerful in that moment than I had in years. Maybe ever.

Because that is mine. No company can lay off a creative. No 6am email can take away what you make with your hands. The job was always temporary. The creativity was always permanent. I just needed the layoff to show me which one actually mattered.

And honestly? Creativity has changed more than just my work. It's changed what I find beautiful in people. There is something magnetic about someone who makes things. Who has a practice. Who creates just because they can't not. I never used to think about that. Now I think about it all the time.

If you are reading this and you haven't found your door yet, I want you to know it exists. It might be clay. It might be a camera. It might be a kitchen or a garden or a piece of music you've been too scared to write.

But it's there. And the moment you walk through it, everything else starts to open.

We were all born creative. Some of us just needed something taken away before we remembered.