Creative energy needs management
Creativity is my favorite spark, but without the right support, it can bring me to a standstill.
For years, when ideas flooded in faster than I could capture them, I reached for Candy Crush. Dulling my brain quieted the panic—the fear that my ideas would die because the distance between where I was and where they wanted to go felt too great.
With guidance from the Milan Art Institute, I began leveling-up my skills. I learned techniques, tools, and processes that allowed me to execute more of what I imagined. Just as importantly, I learned how to break big ideas into smaller moves and where to look for help when I got stuck. The path forward isn’t straighter, but it’s become less daunting.
As I became more capable, I ran into a new kind of overwhelm. I could finally execute—but I couldn’t keep all the moving pieces in my head.
That’s when I began experimenting with systems I could trust. I cycled through Apple Notes, Evernote, physical notebooks, and Notion, searching for reliable landing spots for ideas, photos, tutorial reels, writing, and to-do lists.
What I needed wasn’t control. It was reassurance. A way to know that if I couldn’t act on something immediately, it wouldn’t be lost.
Now that I have a structure in place, I can genuinely enjoy feeling free. My favorite days are the opposite of systematic—so open and unscheduled that I can follow each impulse in real time. When I’m answering emails and suddenly remember I wanted to change the background on a source photo, I pivot. When a song sparks a project idea, I stop and jot it down before the thought dissolves. And when I’m finally in the studio, and a piece suggests an entirely different direction, I change course.
Creativity, it turns out, is messy. Following energy in the moment means leaving things unfinished where they stand. Sometimes that’s the studio floor. Sometimes it’s the living room, the kitchen table, the garage. This momentum can feel like chaos to the people I share space with, but it makes my brain deeply happy. It collapses the distance between motivation and action.
In 2026, I hope we can all honor the messiness (while approaching it a bit more neatly) and keep choosing forward motion, even (especially) when it’s scary.
Happy New Year!
