Creativity and inspiration comes when we allow ourselves the space to spread our wings and fly.
It had been about 13 years since I last sketched anything more than a doodle, which I only did during company conference calls. Don’t get me wrong, I expressed my creativity in other ways for some of those years (graphic design, photography, website building, event promotions, marketing consulting work for artistic and creative clients), but most of that stopped when I took an in-house role with less creative opportunities, more responsibilities, and longer hours. Let’s be honest. Who’s inspired to be creative when they’re working 60 to 80+ hours a week at a desk? No one!
The crazy thing was, the longer I went without a creative outlet the more I found myself shifting to unhealthy behaviors. I gained a ton of weight, had high blood pressure, was stressed out and struggling to stay positive, and many of my close relationships were suffering. Without even realizing it, I’d become someone I didn’t like that much. Depressed, on the verge of a heart attack, and hurting the people I loved most. It was about six months after resigning from my high-paying corporate position that I finally began to realize where I’d gone wrong – I had given up on myself!
Somewhere in my subconscious I knew there must be a way to overcome this and find my happy self again. So I set out to work on this with a professional coach. With their guidance, I refocused on my “why” and was able to visualize how renewing my creative side could actually reignite parts of me that I had cast out, pushed deep down, and ignored.
So with this in mind, I decided the simplest way to reignite my creative side would be to sketch the first thing I could think of. At the time, I really didn’t think much about what I chose to sketch, but this first creative push led me to begin drawing my feathered friends. (I’ll have to save the back story about why this was significant for another time.)
That night, I sat down in my living room with a sketchbook and a cheap mechanical pencil, and something wonderful happened. I took a deep breath, imagined I was in the yard watching the birds playing, and focused on my personal why. Suddenly, my hand was busy at work touching the pencil to the page.
There it was, less than an hour later I saw the bird on the paper come to life. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t need to be. This short amount of time discovering my creativity fueled me to start the next drawing, and then the next. The creative practice had begun and as I continued to tap into my creativity, they began to flow more freely, my health issues subsided, and I found that happy girl who had been hiding for so long.
If this story helped you or made you realize you’ve been hiding your creativity for too long, please connect with me. Connections to other like-minded creative souls is a huge part of living your best creative life.
Image depicts an American Goldfinch eating seeds while perched on top of a Echinacea Flower. Sketch is titled Finch’s Feast, and is hand drawn by Laura Lucht in January of 2022.
Interested in purchasing a matted limited edition print of Finch’s Feast? Click here to see if prints are available.
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