How do I get my spark back?

Resuscitating my inner creative after I was sure she was dead.

I am a creative. My life revolves around my passions, whether its writing, acting, dance or any opportunity to flex my creative muscles. However, this hasn’t always been the case. For a large chunk of my late teens and early adulthood I abandoned my inner creative and lived in a sleepwalk of education, gym, an unfulfilling relationship and vacant social life. I didn’t even read for pleasure. Years of living this way became comfortable, and the deeper I fell into a life of mediocrity the harder it was to pull myself out, only to wake up one day working in a sales jobs that would make 17 year-old Angel throw her copy of The Communist Manifesto at me in rage. Inspiration was barren, I was lost and my spark had died. How did I get it back? I need to take you back to the beginning.

I’m a firm believer in taking note of the things you loved doing as a kid, before being corrupted by expectations, realism or responsibilities. I wrote my first short story when I was 9 years old—it was about a haunted orphanage and a menacing hooded figure who was stealing children’s souls. I spent my Saturdays at a performing arts school learning all different types of dance, and did my first professional acting job when I was 4 years-old. I don’t mention this so you can psychoanalyse my creative writing projects (that’s a conversation meant for my therapist only) but more to illustrate that the things that we are meant to do are always hidden in plain sight.

Even when I nurtured my creativity, I never saw it as a serious career path. School was spent trying on the outfits of different jobs until one of them felt like they fit. A narrative I was surrounded by was that a degree from a good university would open up so many doors, so I threw myself into my studies, so much so that the time spent being creative started to seem superfluous. I quit the youth theatre group and dance school I’d been part of all my life, I didn’t bother auditioning for the school plays and pretty much stopped writing altogether. I treated my passions as an insignificant hobby, something that would take away from my opportunities in the ‘real world’ and should be left behind in my childhood.

This game of dress-up continued into university as I chased internships and joined societies that would look good on a CV, but I didn’t feel particularly passionate about. I was obsessed with the idea of being successful, without fully knowing what success even meant to me. In the absence of understanding what I wanted in life, I absorbed the dreams of everyone around me, measured in the prowess of the firm you work at and the salary you earn. This was never something I cared about, but suddenly it was my only priority.

Probably not coincidentally, this time in my life was also when my mental health was at its lowest. I had crippling social anxiety and depression, minimal self esteem and a chain of unexplained physical health issues that was later found to be triggered by my poor mental health. It felt like something inside me was physically trying to claw its way out. What made matters worse was my lack of support system. I had a boyfriend who told me I complained too much and treated me more like his mother than a partner. I didn’t really have any friends, and the friends I did have were not living in London. I was so deeply unhappy and had no idea how to fix it, I was bursting into tears at every slight inconvenience and was shaken by the looming reality of only having one year left before the education system spat me out onto the streets of adulthood. I had hit rock bottom.

Now, it’s easy for me to say that therapy changed my life, but it was more than that. Sure, therapy gave me the tools to deal with my issues and a weekly room to cry in, but it was a conscious effort to revive my creative self that really helped me become the person I am today. It was my therapist who asked what I used to enjoy doing as a kid. She encouraged me to join the drama club at uni, to which I was cast in two plays straight away and had the opportunity to direct a radio play. Having a script in my hand felt like a match igniting, and I suddenly recognised myself more than I had in years. I would look forward to rehearsals all week, and finally felt like I had some time to play and be free of the intense pressure I put on myself.

I was glowing with how much fun I was having, so my therapist asked me about writing. I hadn’t written for pleasure since the politics blog I had as a teen, and certainly hadn’t written any fiction for a decade. She challenged me to pick 5 random words and write a short story about it. I was skeptical, but she had been right about everything else so far, so I gave it a fair shot. I ended up writing about a dystopian post-apocalyptic Orwellian society where humans had destroyed the Earth to such an extent that scientists found a way to colonise the clouds and make them liveable. It took me embarrassingly long to write, it wasn’t particularly well-written, but it was the first time in my adult life that I had experienced a flow-state, the realm where creativity takes over and you let yourself be guided by your art. My imagination, once a dormant neglected space, was thriving and colourful again. This started to bleed into all aspects of my life; I started cooking more experimentally, taking more risks with my style, thinking about getting more tattoos (that one my parents were not so keen on!). I discovered that your creative self is its own organism, it needs feeding and patience and care and kindness. Without this nurturing, a part of you is malnourished, and life becomes emaciated.

A consequence of therapy that most people don’t tell you about, is that you will most probably break up with your partner. Believe me, I did not expect it either, I thought I was so in love and would be with this person forever. But the more I learnt to love myself and enjoy living, the more I began to see how little he added to my life or aligned with the life I wanted. I turned a blind eye to the ways he mistreated me because having a boyfriend was the only thing that made me feel normal, connected to other people my age, or like I was maybe doing life correctly. Tending to my imagination and allowing it to flourish allowed me to finally imagine a life without him. So we broke up.

Now we fast forward a little: I have my degree, I’m single, I’ve just moved back to London after a unbearable 6 months living back home in Buckinghamshire whilst I applied for jobs. I’m watching Conversations With Friends, the BBC adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel, and they’re doing spoken word poetry. My ears perk up. That exists? I didn’t know people still wrote poetry. Better yet, that people could write their own material to then stand on stage and perform it with so much vigour and energy. I decide in that moment that I was going to become a spoken word poet.

And that I did; I have performed at the V&A museum, been featured on BBC Radio London, performed with live jazz bands and been paid actual real money more times than I can remember to perform my poems. Not only this, I’ve written a short film that is due to go into production later in the year, am deep into the draft of my first novel, have an acting agent and go to dance classes every week! I won’t apologise for boasting, because women seem to think they can’t shout about their amazing achievements, but what is important is that if you would have told me 5 years ago that I had done all of these things, I would have laughed in your face. It is never too late to resuscitate your creative self, nothing is impossible and the only thing limiting yourself is your unwillingness to try.

Achievements are great, but another thing creativity will cure is loneliness. A large chunk of my closest dearest friends I have met through performing in local plays, going to poetry readings and shaking ass in dance classes. I have had romances and relationships with people I have met in the crowds of poetry gigs, giggled with girls in pottery painting workshops, debriefed with old friends whilst jewellery making and discovered whole new communities that have patiently waited for me to find them. Allowing my creativity to lead my decisions also helped me realise I was queer which is now such a massive part of my identity and art. I wasn’t fortunate to find ‘my people’ at uni, but that was because I was not being myself at all, and the only way to attract people into your life who are meant to stay, is by being authentic, and authenticity should be guided by your passions.

I was so focused on forcing doors open that weren’t meant for me, that I failed to notice the ones that had been open my entire life. I’m still only at the beginning of my creative career, but for the first time I feel like I have a purpose. My creative abilities have never changed, but my ability to be creative has always been intrinsically linked to how I feel about myself. For anyone feeling stuck or stifled, I urge you to ask yourself what parts of your life make you feel sluggish, uninspired, weighed down? Those are the parts anchoring your creativity in a standstill, and may need help dislodging.

I often wonder, if I had never lost my spark, where could I be now? Am I too late? Is it really what I’m meant to do if I so easily gave it up? When I dwell on this too much I start to get upset, thinking how much time I wasted. The only thing I can control is to not waste any more time and to prioritise my creativity at every opportunity. Tend to your passions like the blossoming peace lily in your living room, or the meandering monstera crawling over your book shelf. For the sake of yourself, and for the world, keep your creative self alive, and don’t let the expectations of the boring normal world dim your spark.