I’m looking back on the journal that I received on Christmas morning, and I remembered what I wrote that same day. My dad was calling friends and relatives to wish them a ‘happy holiday,’ and I remember him saying this one thing about me to a friend:

“she loves to f**king write.”

Damn right, I do! Like it’s a bad thing? No. I own it. 

Somewhere along the margins, I drew a determined snail slowly gliding her way out of her shell towards a cup of coffee. The context? I contemplated a young girl — too shy to say her own name, mainly because it was also a month — would soon be able to sip her coffee, and speak her mind and share her stories, no matter if it were with words, vocal cords, or a sculpture. It doesn’t matter how fast she is going, how long it’ll take her to get there, and who knows? It may take her faster than she thinks.

I said in Unstoppable | How I’ve Been After a Month’s Hiatus, that my career path would be changing as opposed to what I said in FESTIVE FRIDAY NIGHTS: How To Make Your Dreams Come True | How I Realized Mine. Damn. I don’t know whether to insert an eye-roll emoji or a shrugging emoji. Talk about a girl who can’t make up her mind! I mean, hey, at least I stuck with a major! 🤣 there’s an emoji, for y’all!

But when was the last time I took a pen to paper? At work, I do, but I’m just jotting down ideas for the social media internship. But to physically write my thoughts down as if my blog or Microsoft Word never existed. Jotting down my thoughts sporadically on a page doesn’t help. I want to write. I want to be creative and write for everything — every magazine, publish my work, and just let my God-given artistic side shine like Christmas Lights through an opaque window. Thick the glass may be, I believe that glass is meant to be Society. Society yearns to break through the glass, except for the one-track-minded, who just shake their head ‘no’ and disapprove.

My brother told me, “at least you’re not going to work in social media.” Oops, sorry! It’s amazing how many people think that the arts, especially fashion, are so “superficial.” They’re not. It’s also amazing how our brains and our hearts refuse to listen to each other, like Venus and Mars. People thrive on creativity, and there are some that just simply thrive on logic. It’s not impossible to combine the two. I’ve done it through various works of art, without fearing the opinions of others. But at the same time, we can’t help but want other people’s opinions. I’ve come to realize there will be people who will not like my work, and that’s okay because their opinions don’t pay my bills (or tuition, LOL!)

Moral of the story: dive into your creative side more. I can’t hurt, no matter how ostensibly “bad” you think you are at, say, drawing. There are many ways to be creative. Except, to be creative is one thing, but to be a creator is another. I, personally, have no shame in being a creator. I was never that teenager who would settle for one of those tip-jar-jobs we (almost) all had in high school. Judge all you want, call me a priss, or whatever. But I love being a creator, and to create is what I wanted (and still) do for a living.

No matter what you’re career path is, I wish you Godspeed, and I hope that just for an hour, or even 15 minutes, you can appreciate a work of art or dive into a creative project.

xoxo,

April 😘💕