Day 85: creative essence ✨
who you are, as a creative person
Hi Creatives,
Thank you to
for all of the ways she reminded us of and helped us connect with our intuitions this week – you can connect with her here and follow her here for more of her thoughtful insights and warm encouraging words.Day 85! We’re getting close to the end here – how are we feeling? Is your project ready to wrap up, or are you thinking of continuing or evolving it in some way?
This week our theme is creative identity. What does it mean to you?
A few questions for you to think or journal on:
Who am I, as a creative person?
How has my project shifted, enhanced (or something else!) my sense of myself?
What am I ready to claim?
What am I ready to let go of?
I feel like a creative shapeshifter. I’m a writer, but I don’t always write. I’ve started and dropped about a few dozen different types of creative practices over the years, but I don’t feel bad about it (not anymore, at least). Lately I’m into painting, but I know there’s a book and a tarot deck and a few other things in there that want to be made. Some of them will and some of them won’t and some of them will morph from the thing I think they are to the thing they actually are. One of the things I’ve been thinking and feeling through around creativity is this: how does naming or claiming an identity help me, and how does it limit me?
If I resist a label like Artist, is it because I feel unworthy of the title or because it doesn’t feel like it fits?
I don’t know! (A bit of both, probably). I do know that words are powerful.
Recently I described myself in a certain way to my therapist and she said, “but that’s not who you are. That’s not your essence.” And I had a bit of a lightbulb moment that maybe essence is a word that feels like a better fit, for me, than identity.
So what’s your creative essence? Do you feel a difference between identity and essence? What’s a word that feels like a better fit for you?
Projects end but the journey continues – keep going!
XO,
Lindsay
Sometimes I'm aware that I'm a vessel, collecting and holding ideas, experience, images etc., until there is a shift and it begins to pour out. Poetry mostly, but also art, gardening, cooking.
There are times when I feel more like a prism in that nothing is held at all and creativity just seems to flow through.
I'm often in a state of awe when weeks go bye like this.
As to essence and identity, my direct experience is the former is free and clear, and curiosity and awe somehow filter through. But the latter is more restrictive and generally ego-driven by the need to be, or not be, a certain someone. The latter doesn't serve me so well and often throws up limitations, doubt and judgement on what is being produced. The former doesn't take connection to and creative output personally, and so is freer to just see how it will turn out.
I would add that there can be a plan but, as you say, there needs to be room for Grace to steer it. My job is to stay true to that.