Writer & Creativity Coach
I am a writer, but for the longest time I didn't call myself that.
I felt like I hadn't earned the title because I hadn't published a book.
In school, a professor of mine once said, "if your paintings don't end up in a museum are you really an artist, or are you just a Sunday painter?"
I had a dream then, to become a writer, but I was also unsure of myself, too intimidated by the publishing industry and afraid of rejection to put my work out into the world. My professor’s words stayed with me, making me question the legitimacy of my identity as a writer.
After school, I longed for a career that felt meaningful to me.
I had a Master’s in Art History, but after a few years of working in museums and non-profits, I was burned out by dysfunctional management and low wages.
I had been willing to trade a high salary for fulfillment and meaningful work, but I realized that I didn’t have either.
I decided then to try for a corporate job, but I feared that my years in non-profits had not equipped me well for the pace and challenge of corporate work.
It took me a long time to build up the courage to even try.
When I landed a job at Microsoft, snagged in that incredible window of opportunity during the summer of 2021, I thought I had made it.
My work felt meaningful again because I was being challenged and learning new things. I was gaining confidence in my skills and my ability to excel in a high stakes role.
But, at the beginning of 2023, the tech boom of the pandemic era began to falter. Person after person lost their “stable” corporate tech jobs. A field that had once been a safe bet, suddenly felt like a huge gamble.
It was scary to imagine losing all the stability and security I had been able to secure. But underneath the fear, there was a small flicker of excitement. I realized that part of me would actually be relieved to be laid off and forced to start over (again).
That feeling made me so curious.
What else did I long for, that sweetened the thought of losing the comfort of financial and professional security?
During that time of uncertainty,
I had my first experience with professional coaching.
It was a collaboration that allowed me to expand my thinking and explore the question I’d been asking myself for years: what do I want to do?
In our first session, I told my coach
“I wish I could figure out what my ‘purpose’ is,” it was a challenge that felt so vast and thorny that I didn’t really have any expectation that we would solve it.
“What would you do if you were laid off?”
When my coach asked me this, I was tempted to start talking through the logistics of finding an new source of income. But instead, I let myself linger on the thought blooming in my mind.
It was an image I had conjured a thousand times: me at my desk, sun flooding across the room, words pouring onto the page: writing.
“I would be a writer,” I said.
I decided I would try. Every day, before and after work I wrote, working on a memoir that had been languishing in a Google doc for years. Finally, I started to shift the inertia. I watched the words pile up and felt the exhilaration and pride that had often been absent in my career.
It made me wonder why I had waited so long to try.
My coach did not give me the answers about what my purpose was, held out to me on a shimmering silver platter.
But they gave me the space to listen to the small voice that was speaking the truth about what I wanted. Most importantly, coaching reminded me that everything good and meaningful I had in my life existed because I was brave enough to try.
Are you an artist, or just a Sunday painter?
You do not need to consider yourself an artist to experience the joy and development that comes through creative expression.
Cultivating a creative practice in your life can give you insights into your professional life and help get you unstuck when you aren’t sure how to move forward.
Creativity is not about the recognition we earn or the art we make. It is about the creation process itself. I have been writing since I was seventeen, learning new styles, refining my craft, trying to get published.
Accomplishing the things we long for is important. It adds credibility to who we are and what we do. But the process, the creating, is where we spend most of our time.