Embracing Creativity: My Journey of Self-Discovery and Personal Growth

I did not always call myself a creative.

For a long time, I believed I was simply easily distracted, drawn to strange textures, half-sentences, unfinished notebooks, and the quiet spaces between ideas. I knew I loved to make things, but I did not know what that meant. I was not painting on canvas or composing symphonies. I was arranging words, chasing images in my head, trying to make meaning from chaos. It did not feel like art at the time. It felt like instinct.

David Bowie and the Shift

Then I discovered David Bowie. I saw him in an interview once, talking about how he created a song, how he would take fragments of lyrics, images, and phrases, cut them apart, rearrange them, and build something new. He was not chasing perfection. He was chasing emotion. That moment stayed with me.

He did not just create songs, he created worlds. Personas. Portals. He showed me that words are not just for communication. They are for construction. For invention. He treated language like sound, like fabric, like color. I began to understand that words could build images, ideas, and entire inner landscapes. Bowie did not ask for permission. He simply made. He collapsed the line between the seen and the imagined, and he made me realize I could, too. And for the first time, I saw a reflection of myself.

Words as Material

That was the moment something shifted in me: I began to see words not as tools, but as materials. I stopped thinking of them as something I had to get right and began using them the way a painter uses pigment or a sculptor uses clay. I began to use words to make things.

Not everyone understands that. Especially now, in working with AI-generated visuals, I have felt the tension rise about how quickly people jump to label it “not real,” “not human,” “not art.” But what they do not see, what they refuse to see, are the hours spent crafting those images. The prompts were written and rewritten. The mental picture held and pursued for days. The experimentation, the frustration, the microscopic detail. They do not see the emotional investment, the same search for resonance and truth that any traditional artist knows.

Art is not the brush. It is the eye. The choices. The sensitivity. The intention. Bowie taught me that. He taught me to see the act of creation as a kind of performance, a dialogue between self and world, between the seen and the unseen. And that has stuck with me. It is why I make things the way I do.

The Spiral of Self-Discovery

Self-discovery as a creative did not come to me in a neat arc. It came in spirals. In scattered notebooks, half-finished projects, intense highs followed by weeks of stillness and doubt. It came through imposter syndrome so thick I could not even say the word “artist” out loud. It came through wanting to make things so badly my fingers ached, and through the heartbreak of not always being able to explain why.

I had to unlearn a lot. I had to unlearn the idea that art needs to be validated by others to be real. I had to unlearn the myth that “real” artists are always producing, always sharing, always confident in what they do. I had to stop measuring my creativity against output and start seeing it as a relationship—sometimes loud and consuming, sometimes quiet and distant, but always there. Always mine.

There were times I thought I had lost it. That whatever spark had once been there was gone. But I have come to understand that those seasons, the ones where everything feels still, where nothing seems to be coming, are often the times when something deeper is taking root. Not everything a creative does is meant to be seen. Some of it is compost. Some of it is soil. And through it all, the act of creating, especially through words, remains my anchor.

Owning the Identity

I have realized that I do not need permission to call myself an artist. I do not need to arrive at some fixed version of myself. I just need to keep showing up. Keep building worlds out of syllables. Keep chasing light with language. Whether I am writing, dreaming up visuals, or merging the two into something hybrid and new, I am still creating. There is a special kind of magic in being a multidisciplinary creative. People ask, “Are you a writer or a visual artist?” and I say, “Yes.” The tools shift, but the voice does not. My medium may change, but my vision is consistent: to make something that reflects the inside of me, that connects, that says, “I was here. I saw things this way.”

Shapeshifting Is the Way

We live in a world that wants everything to be clearly labeled and easily consumed. But creativity does not work that way. Discovery does not work that way. Some of us are shapeshifters. Some of us use language as a mirror, a bridge, or a doorway. Some of us use algorithms like paintbrushes not to cheat the process, but to transform it. So when I say I use words to make things, I mean that literally. I use language to create images, stories, sensations, and moods. Whether it is a poem, a visual artwork made with prompts and pixel-magic, or a thought that will not leave me alone until I write it down, I am crafting with intention. With care. With something real.

Still Remembering

Finding my way as a creative has not been about achieving clarity.

It has been about embracing contradiction. About dancing in the space between disciplines. About claiming every part of myself, even the ones others do not understand as valid, sacred, and part of the work. So I will continue. I will use my voice. I will bend language and blend mediums. I will take inspiration from the late, great Bowie and from all the artists who made worlds out of dreams. And I will keep making mine, one word, one image, one moment at a time. Because art is not a title you earn. It is a truth you remember, and I am still remembering.

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