When Creativity Strikes Differently Than You’d Hoped

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We strive to create, to be different, yet simultaneously fit into the mold of a world that is full of similar bodies all doing similar things. Creatively, these last few months I’ve been quiet, or at least quieter than I’ve been in the past. My poems are more private and my stories are filed somewhere in a digital cave where I, some days, meander my way through the thick of the dark and try my hand at storytelling again. 

For the last year and a half, my time was divvied up between grant clients, grant proposals, reel-making, and the occasional YouTube video when the doubt didn’t feel too heavy for me to place my face in front of a camera. 

As an entrepreneur, I lavished in the freedom of time that usually bent towards procrastination, it was beautiful procrastination nonetheless, but wildly unhelpful to the things I needed to do.

Recently, I entered back into the workforce as a grant writer, with real co-workers and everything. Believe me, it was almost a shock- walking into an office with a room full of people who weren’t my housemates. The unfamiliarity of it all bothered me, yet left me feeling somewhat excited to “be” in the world again. 

I honestly had no intention of being a “work-in-in-the-office-with-a-morning-commute” type of person anytime soon, yet, here I am.  This process has taught me that things do not always work out as planned, and that is a good thing. What we strive to get or to have in our lives isn’t always the thing we need. This understanding has been a constant reminder for me in the last couple of months.

No, I haven’t been able to “create” or “produce” as much. But, this 9-5 job has taught me how to value time, how creativity isn’t meant to be forced, but it is a beautiful addition to the work that I do, the life I live, and the people I meet along the way. I am learning how to be more fruitful with creation and more patient with myself, even if it is the opposite of what I’d hoped.

Creativity & Answered Prayers

I didn’t expectt to love my job as much as I do. To enjoy the presence of other people who also love their jobs and express mere joy at the thought of it. Yes, some of us miss working from home and we’re holding out for at least two days to do so, but this new thing has its perks of unexpected laughter and camaraderie. I am surrounded by creators and artists and lovers of simple things like coffee and paint, non-profit work, and activism. 

When I prayed for more; more experience in the non-profit world, more discipline, more growth as a human fashioned in God’s very own image, I didn’t know it would look like this. I didn’t know creativity could lie in the unexpected way it has unraveled in my life this last month. 

Sometimes, creativity strikes differently than we’d hoped, and it turns out to be better than anything we could have expected.