Creativity Can Lay Dormant for Years Then Explode from Absolutely Nowhere

For at least 10 years of my adult life I locked away my creative impulses, downed tools and focused on other ambitions. But then the waters shifted and now I can't imagine it being any other way...

At some point during the early months of my current relationship, my partner and I had a particularly heated argument (this wasn’t a rarity, back then we both had edges that needed sanding down). In this particular instance, he had dared to suggest that I wasn’t ‘a creative’ and I had taken grave offence at such malignment. Looking back, I can see in several ways we were both wrong. He was being prescriptive and pompous about what constitutes artistic expression and as a recent art school graduate was choosing an extremely literal definition from a professional point of view of what it means to be ‘a creative.’

From my side, I should probably have admitted he was kind of right. Yes, I was a writer and I like to think I did a fair job of being a fashion desk editor. But I wasn’t doing much artistically, certainly nothing that AI couldn’t replicate today. I didn’t have a definitive style or niche and I certainly hadn’t shown much promise of the writer I am now a decade later. The truth is journalistic writing and reporting can be mechanical and formulaic - more creative than copywriting, for sure, but sometimes not by much. Or perhaps it wasn’t the job itself. Perhaps I was just a bad creative at the time, you’d have to ask my bosses.

Regardless, it wasn’t so much that the artistry of the written word was being challenged that got my goat. It was more that he didn’t perceive me inherently as a creative. Anyone who follows my social accounts these days would probably see things differently. I don’t mean because I’m a content creator, because I’m not particularly creative in that respect. But more because I am always making something whether it’s a baby blanket for a friend, bolster cushions or painted plates. But I really wasn’t like this 10 years ago.