One of the most important lessons I’ve learned on the creative journey is this:

I don’t need to feel any certain way to create.

I can make something beautiful + alive even if I feel sad, uninspired, anxious, or apathetic.

And I believe the same is true for all of us.

Because art is more about being alive than feeling good.

It’s less about feeling inspired and more about deciding to make something with the energy happening inside of us right now.

Any feeling can be a doorway into this energy (because our feelings are simply energies moving through our bodies in a particular way).

So if I let myself feel sadness when it shows up -- when I give it room in my experience -- I have access to the energy that animates + enlivens that sadness.

I have access to what’s alive inside the feeling.

Because my sadness (or any feeling), at its core, is just aliveness happening inside of me.

And it’s the aliveness I want.

It’s the aliveness that supports me in making things that are also alive.

So the core creative task, as I see it, is to be available for our aliveness, however it’s showing up for us that day (even when it’s showing up in ways we don’t like).

From there, we can access its power + pour it into anything we want, including our art.

So my creativity doesn’t ask me to feel good.

It just asks me to make room for my feelings.

It’s not particularly easy to create through grief, apathy, or anxiety.

But it’s easier than trying to summon a feeling I don’t have.

And realness is always more resonant, nourishing, and magical than fakeness anyway (even when the real thing is harder than we would have preferred).

I don’t need my art to be happy, beautiful, or inspired.

I just need it to be real + alive.

I need it to be the product of whatever alive realness I was able to pull out of me that day.

Which means I can make art from anywhere, with any feeling.

And that my creativity is resilient, gritty, and powerful.

What might it mean to believe that yours is too?