And so the years go by, and I see fellow creatives that I love pursue the work and even come out with a product that they are able to share with the world. All the while, I look at my own lack of creative output with distain. On worse days, I allow my negative self talk to use it in its argument to convince myself that I should disappear.

But I’m still visible. I am here. And though I have struggled many times to figure myself out so I can properly create, I am starting to think that, perhaps, I shouldn’t wait until I’m ready emotionally. I should just do it right now.

So why shouldn't I treat writing the same way? It's another creative pursuit, like photography. Just write, post and be done with it, right? Maybe it's because I care more about writing. I'm more hard on myself when I write. So, I simply can't just let something I write be.

I've been using AI more lately. Had Claude help me write a blog post about getting back to creative work. The result was better than anything I could have written myself, at least in terms of structure and flow. And that got me thinking about whether AI would eventually do this for everything. My photography, my creative decisions, all of it. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this time actually is different.

So here's the thing. I could easily spend entire days playing video games. But underneath all that comfortable numbness, there's this persistent itch. This voice that won't shut up about projects I want to tackle, stories I want to write, things I want to make that don't exist yet.

I've been staring at this website for three years. Not constantly—I'm not that obsessive. But it's been sitting in my Squarespace dashboard since 2022, half-built, with placeholder text that said things like "Coming soon" and "More content on the way." Here's what happened in those three years: I spent them building a life that feels stable enough to handle creative vulnerability again.