Remembering the Why: Capturing the Joy for Creativity

Hola, dear readers, it's been quite some time, so, we are starting the week off right with a chat about creativity!Why does anyone start anything? Beginning the thing which ultimately changes the course of your life and now you can't imagine living without that one thing that brings you joy?I recently had a birthday, reaching an age that still seems a little unbelievable. In 23 years, I have seen myself as a writer and a poet, a little girl loved by God, and now a woman journeying to wholeness with notebooks, ideas, and God always near her heart.Life lies at the tips of my fingers and I want with everything in me to grasp with confidence joy that comes with living unafraid of tomorrow, of yesterday, and of now. In creating words and crafting sentences and stories I see, equally, how important it is to craft a life worth living.God, in all his loving kindness and supreme awesomeness, has so beautifully been revealing to me the art of living. Living on purpose with the intent of knowing Him and being known by him. Living, because as long as I have breath free flowing from my heart and into my lungs there is joy to be had, in any moment, at any time.Over the years, writing has been refuge, creativity, and simply a way of living for me. At one point in my life, I couldn't go a day without writing, without creating something with words on paper in ink. As life met momentous occasions, high school graduation, writing classes with professors, and ultimately post-grad life, what used to bring me so much joy and freedom felt suffocating. I distrusted my words and the notebooks that carried them because I felt my words weren't good enough. Felt they were too personal and betrayed me even though they came from me.Over the last year, 23, brought with it growth and certain levels of maturity that allowed me to love myself and rediscover this craft of writing, of creativity. I had to remember why I grabbed a pen and a legal pad in the first place. I had to remember why it mattered to me.There is a moment, I believe, in every artist's life where remembering the why becomes imperative to continuing a life of wonder and creativity. Through hardships, grief, pain, joy, love, and momentous occasions in life, our creativity is what spurs us on to daily designing the life we want to live, the one we were meant live. Because without the why, it just becomes a chore, a task without all the joy it used to bring. Living creatively requires living on purpose and with meaning. This means even in the mundane, the routine, and the process because the why is too important to forget.So, here's to year 24 and choosing to remember why I started it all in the beginning. 

Sincerely,

~ Antavia

 *Featured Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash