When I wrote this, it was the last Inspired Collective session of this semester and I'm proud of myself for the consistency I have managed to regain over the past few weeks. For those of you asking what the Inspired Collective is, it's a magical space for artists of every kind to come together and explore their creativity through master classes and live create sessions. It is the sole reason that I'm sat here writing today and I just feel so incredibly grateful to be a part of this space. In the year that I have been involved in the Inspired Collective, I have been part of so many beautiful, vulnerable conversations about what it means to be an artist in this world. It's just magic. But the thing I wanted to talk about today is a paragraph in a post I read this morning that I can't stop thinking about.

“I'm trying to get through without only feeling like I am passing time.”

This line hit me, putting into words a feeling that I have felt for so long without fully understanding it. I think so many of us spend our lives just passing time without realising it. Held back by all these narratives we've collected about why right now isn’t the perfect time is to do any of the things that might bring us meaning. That this moment cannot be woven with magic and joy because of all our responsibilities that come from elsewhere. It's not our fault, not at all. We live in a world that tries to tell us all about the million other ways that we should be living our lives. We're so bombarded with noise that can be hard to find the quiet sometimes. We are taught so much in our lives, how to spell, how to count, how to conjugate verbs, calculate the mass of any given objects, a crazy assortment of STUFF. But it is rare that we’re taught how to create quiet, how to find peace, how to connect with who we truly are within instead of everything we're told we are or should be out there. We forget how to chase joy like we did as kids amidst lessons and to do lists and rules about everything. Somehow things that used to be fun, become inconveniences, we huff about the rain when we used to jump in the puddles.

We're taught to stop listening to what our bodies are telling us, to hold off our needs until a more convenient time, and to postpone our joy. There is a pressure to make meaning of it all, for everything to have a reason. What if we allowed that reason to be joy or peace or just pure magic? What we learn how to let go of all those meanings that mean nothing to us when we stop to examine them? What if we found a way to give ourselves permission to stop only passing the time and explore what gives us that time the meaning that we want it to have instead? What if we found our way back to that little version of ourselves that still lives within us and return through what brought them joy? I think that this is the place I'm in now. I spent so long journaling and reading and watching things that help me make sense of all the noise. I had thought sort through all the stories and attempt to throw away any that did not really feel true. It was all very serious but at the time I needed it to be. I needed to explore who I am without all that external noise.

I've been finding it so hard to return to this place and continue to create like I was before because there was trying to force myself into the mould of the version of myself at that point in time. I wasn't allowing myself to understand that perhaps I had changed. Perhaps my way of creating needed to change with me. I feel as though I need to let all the seriousness go for a little while. I think this place needs to evolve like I have. I feel as though the meaning of the moment is to re discover that joy. To find out what I might rather be doing than only passing time. I am ready to experiment with my life might look like if it was more on my own terms than everyone else’s.

I am ready to make a new meaning of it all.

the images from this post are from a beautiful moment this morning where we packed up breakfast and went out to the forest and it was just magical ✨

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