At least, that’s the case for me.
As a creative, it’s imperative I find ways to make a living off of being creative.
As a creative, it’s twice as imperative to find ways to keep that spark alive.
How ironic that the two are always cancelling each other out.
2024 hasn’t been the easiest year. With lots of goodbyes, growing pains, internal conflicts, and external struggles, it’s been a year that has aged me quite a bit. I love to face adversity because it gives me grit, but sometimes the frequency can get too high and cause me to face depression.
I never knew what depression felt like until 2024 came. I thought it was just deep sadness. But it’s not. It’s much more profound. And when you tap into that part of your brain, it’s almost so intolerable that you can’t quite imagine what it was like to be happier before that current moment. “How could I have ever been happier?,” I asked myself, looking at my self-inflicted scars. Sometimes, you feel so much pain it turns into laughter. You feel so much resentment it turns into love. You feel so much anger it turns into joy.
It’s hard to explain, but this is something I never would have understood in the past, because it’s something I never felt.
If you’re reading this and you’ve undergone through a rough time, I’d sure you’d understand. And if you don’t understand, well I hope you never get to that point where you can read this and nod your head in agreement. It isn’t a fun place to be in.
With that being said, with all of the struggles I’ve been facing, the goodbyes I’ve said, having to show up online as if everything is okay, and sharing the beauty of what this world has to offer, there’s a part of me that feels like it’s been withering away quite a bit.
I’m in beautiful places but in the back of my mind I am screaming and asking the universe to grant me a path that would take me out of this. I spend most mornings in complete, utter silence, thinking about all of the things I should and could be doing, but instead I am in a layer of quicksand, desperate to get out of this hole I’m in. How could I do that if I’m stuck here? I ask myself almost daily.
Life is so conflicting, and it’s hard to find a resolution when there’s always the next thing happening, the next bill waiting to be paid. The next project. The next client, the next damn thing. Always.
So anyway, I figured I should start writing more poetically and from my heart more rather than always constantly posting about what others should do, where they should go, and what they should wear to such places.
I feel much better typing this all out, if I do say so myself. I write this as I sip on my black cup of coffee, watch this beautiful sun rise, and listen to cars drive on a somewhat wet road from this morning’s gentle rainfall.
Vulnerability and humility is something we should all be able to share, whether we have a platform or not. Because I believe it brings us together, it invites humility, and most of all it helps us heal.
I’ve finally found my spark again after a week long trip visiting my favorite places along the California coast. I want to share these insights with you and hope it draws you to a conclusion that (in case you’re going through what I’m going through aka a rut) you can get out of it too.
Visiting Familiar Places as a Creative
A viable part of life is traveling and falling in love with places that bring out the absolute best in you in the most wholesome way possible. The kind that makes you smile in awe. The kind where it makes you feel like time as stood still. The kind where it makes you want to come back for years and years to come.
This is how I feel towards places such as Humboldt County, Palm Springs, the Central Coast of California, and plain old Malibu.
As a creative, it’s important to travel because it keeps you constantly inspired and you’re always absorbing new forms of art in a multitude of ways. I think it’s even more important to travel to the same places that make you feel awe, every now and then. If possible, once a year.
This past week I went to Merced (for the first time), Palm Springs, Cambria, and Carmel. I frequent Carmel quite often for work as they are a client of mine at SOOT; I used to frequent Palm Springs and Cambria a lot when I had lived in LA. They were within arms reach and were my go to places when I needed solitude. Now that I live in San Francisco, it’s Carmel, Sonoma County, and Napa Valley.
It’s great to re-visit places because they show your progress as a creative. It’s like when you re-read a book after a couple of years, it hits you differently than how it did the first time. When I visit the same places and photograph them all over again, it quite literally feels like falling in love with the place all over again. It feels like discovering a new part of yourself. It feels like looking into a time portal, because you see right then and there how you would have photographed it before, but now you’re taking a new approach and it’s probably going to look better now than it did then.
It gives you a confidence boost. It gives you inspiration. Most of all, it gives you that groove that you know you need in order to keep those creative juices flowing.
When I revisited Hope Springs and explored through Yucca Valley and Palm Springs, I felt alive again. The same thing happened in Cambria. That feeling of getting out of the car, smelling the salty, fresh air, and watching the sunset at Moonstone Beach made all my sadness go away. I could have cried in that very moment. Happy tears. It made me value my relationship again with my partner. The last time we were there was on our very first trip together. Oh how we’ve aged, and how we’ve gone through hell, but here we are, aren’t we? That moment made me look at him in awe all over again.
The juxtaposition of who I was then and who I am now as a person, as a partner, and as a creative was very clear to me in these moments when I revisited these places. Not to be dramatic, but it felt like it was starting to dissipate the feeling of depression that I had been struggling with all of these months.
Like ocean mist, my depression was just starting to scatter and disappear.
It’s healing. Obviously it’s healing to revisit places that you very much know and love, but you never know you need it until you finally go.
When I was feeling the lowest of the low, I didn’t think to myself, “Wow I should head to Palm Springs maybe that’ll make me feel better.” No, I thought I was in a hole and it was nearly impossible to get out.
You don’t think of these things when you’re going through a rough time. I’m very grateful that the opportunity to revisit these places came about. Perhaps I screamed enough times in my head for the universe to finally grant me that path I needed to start healing.
This is all I have for now.
Thank you for reading. I’m going to start writing my blog posts a little differently from this point on. I’ll be sharing personal anecdotes and sprinkling in happy memories in my future hotel recommendations, winery visits, and more.
Small changes are good, they lead up to the bigger picture.
I don’t know who would read this as I probably will not advertise this on any of my social media pages. But in case you made it this far, thank you.
Until my next raw, deep-in-my-feels post – I hope you stay safe and healthy, happy and sound.
