I have a lot to say about this. if you’d asked me yesterday I probably wouldn’t have thought I did, and yet this does not mean I had an overnight revelation, just that I started listening to what was already there. following on from my recent posts, you could say I have been in somewhat of a creative rut. i’ve been procrastinating, bullying myself and avoiding facing the internal conversation i’ve been having with myself as a result of said procrastination. I would have told you I was fine. and yet these past few days, weeks even, i’ve lost sight of the progress I had made in committing to being kinder to myself. i’ve been turning my back on the promise I made to myself last year to try to be the truest and most authentic version of myself. and why? because I allowed myself to lose sight in my value as a creator.

let me backtrack a little. last year was a rollercoaster of disasters of varying degrees, both personal and societal. 2020 has been a ride. we’re living through a pandemic. the planet is dying. I am no longer a student. I moved to another country. I can’t find a paid job in said country other than babysitting. lots of things are going wrong. and yet somehow the past year has been one of the best years of my life in terms of personal development. i’ve got to know myself better than I have ever done before. i’ve created space for myself within my heart and followed what it truly desires. I wrote the latter part of this post at a time when the telltale feelings of anger and frustration have been bubbling up to the surface to notify me of the fact that I was not ok. and I still kind of feel it. this limbo after graduation? it’s killing me. add in a job market that’s as dry as the Sahara desert and a pandemic that changes your way of life every two seconds and you’ve got yourself a situation for which it is almost impossible to plan. i’ve been applying to jobs left, right and centre and not hearing anything back. i’ve been trying to work out what I want to do with my life, what job I can even see myself doing. convincing myself that if someone would just take a chance on me all my problems would be solved. except while i’ve been doing this soul searching I have also been running an inner dialogue of self deprecation on repeat without even realising it. i’ve been ignoring what I really visualise my professional life looking like, shouting over it with cries of ‘that won’t make you money’ or ‘there’s already enough people doing that, what makes you think the world needs you to do it too?’ and so instead of working through this and trying to come to some kind of solution, i’ve been pushing it all down. if I don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t real, right?

but that’s not working any more. it’s also not healthy in the slightest. something clicked in me one day a month or two ago, something I can’t put my finger on yet. but something definitely changed. I got up, I made breakfast, and unlike every other day this week, I decided that day was a day to do something about it. I didn’t know what, I just knew i’d had enough of sitting on my arse feeling sorry for myself. filling the air with excuses and complaints of having wasted yet another day was not an option any more. it may have something to do with an instagram post I saw the night before from someone who i’m finding hugely inspiring at the moment, amie from @inspiredtowrite. she said something about the fact that she finds herself apologetically showing up in her life. she finds herself apologising for the choices she makes and the space she takes up, about wanting to change that. it made me think for a second. it also made me go and look at the other things she has shared, hoping for a further burst of inspiration. and boy did I get it. if you've got a drop of creativity in your veins I highly recommend listening to her podcast ‘unpublished’. the wisdom is endless. and so from the soul searching today, I have a few thoughts on being a creator in this day and age.

first of all, we don’t get enough damn credit. there, I said it. creative people are under appreciated and it makes us question everything. it kills our sense of self worth. it makes it hard to trust in our value when we’re constantly fed the narrative that by choosing a creative career we’re choosing a life long struggle for money. that it’s a risk. I call bullshit. as this year has taught us, the world would go stir crazy if it weren’t for the creative industries. it keeps us sane. and yet those of us that are creating spend most of our lives going insane. wondering if we’re doing something worthwhile with our lives. feeling guilt for charging money for our craft. struggling to put a price on the work that we overanalyse and criticise throughout the whole creative process. struggling to see the uniqueness of what we have to offer the world. accepting the fact that we’re probably going to have to settle for a part time job while we try to make it in the creative world because these things take time and money doesn’t grow on trees. feeling shame for the fact we haven’t found a ‘proper’ job yet. wondering if we’re even qualified enough, experienced enough to get one. working for free to get more experience. the list goes on. and knowing that I have been feeding this narrative to myself on autopilot? it makes me angry. no one deserves to be made to feel unworthy. no one deserves to feel as though their work doesn’t matter. but it’s scary to turn your back on all the lies you’ve been told your entire life. the starving artist is a stereotype for a reason. these stories don’t come out of thin air. they have been told and retold and we take them as fact. those who break the stereotype are called special, the chosen ones, the exception to the rule. this is not true. we all have potential within us, we just choose the ‘safer’ option of not releasing it into the world. the only difference between those success stories and you? they chose to forge their own path. they chose to call bullshit on these false claims of risk and instability that pursuing an artistic career will lead to. they chose to believe that the world needed their craft. and so should you. you have art inside of you that the world needs to see. it wouldn’t be there if it didn’t. your voice needs to be heard. your creations need to be made. the creative career might not follow a set path, there might not be a clear, concise recipe for success. everyone’s success story is different but that’s the beauty of it all. that’s the magic. we’re not supposed to know how things are going to work out. we’re not supposed to know where our path will lead for every step of the way before we embark upon it. there is no set way to do things and that’s exciting. it means there’s no right or wrong answer. there’s just experiences. life is just a long string of experiences, one after the other and all any of us can do is follow what feels good. to follow what lights a fire within our soul and makes us feel alive. to share with the world the pure magic that we have inside of ourselves in the way that only we can. it would be a damn shame to deprive the world of that because we chose to listen to what someone else had to say rather than follow the truth we know deep within our very core. I am choosing to no longer apologise for creating. I will no longer apologise for taking up space. I won’t do it perfectly. I will trip up. but I refuse to look back on my life one day and regret not sharing my potential. I refuse to give up before i’ve even tried. and so to my inner critic that tells me all too often that the life I envision for myself isn’t possible? I thank you for your concern but I know in my heart that that is not true. i’m choosing to trust in myself, to trust in my process and my craft, to trust that someone out there needs my words. that people will see value in what I have to offer.

I’m choosing myself.

and if I could ask you to do one thing in this life? it would be to choose yourself too.

if you want to hear more about my journey towards a more authentic existence, follow me on instagram @the.authenticity.project and on medium . see my photography work on Instagram @s.ophiea.lice and connect with me on LinkedIn.

big love to you all x