The Muse Isn’t Fragile
Last week I landed back in England, to monotone skies and mizzle, declaring that I’d never feel creative again.
It felt dramatic, but in the moment it also felt true. I had just come back from a trip where I felt like my most expressed self, nestled in the the kind of energy I want to build a life in, and suddenly, I was thrust back into an environment where I didn’t necessarily feel all of those things.
Convinced my creative department was closed for good, I sent this message to the writing retreat group chat:
But of course, as soon as I sent it, something inside of me cracked open.
I climbed out of bed, fumbled my way to my desk in the dark and wrote for 2 hours solid.
I was running on 3 hours of broken, upright sleep on a flight.
Operating in a different timezone from the one I was actually in.
With post-travel blues grabbing at my ankles, trying to pull me down from my high, from that aliveness I’d been living in.
Already lost in the world of doom-scrolling, witnessing news that made me want to crush my phone in my hand.
Starting to realise how much of what I left “to do” when I got home actually has to be done now.
My creativity was seriously under-resourced.
I didn’t feel regulated. I didn’t feel clear. I didn’t feel particularly optimistic.
And yet, I still sat there tapping away.
I was still pouring words onto a blank page, from where inside of me, I have no clue.
I was still able to make something that matters.
I was still making even the most mundane moments mean something.
If this trip taught me anything, it’s that yes, creative environments, connections and cultures are invaluable. I’ll always be drawn to them. I will always crave spaces where I feel creatively alive.
Expressing through true creativity alters your entire state of being.
It alters your energy and the magnetism it holds.
It alters the frequency you put out into the world.
It alters how you are received.
And, that kind of creative energy doesn’t need the perfect conditions to express itself.
Sometimes the best musings arrive when you are too tired to make them make sense.
When you feel like you have nothing to say, but the words keep coming anyway.
When you are rushing, with your attention divided and thoughts all over the place.
When you don’t have the answers and you’re literally discovering them on the page.
When the world around you feels like it’s going to shit and you keep making art anyway because yes, it still matters.
I used to be afraid that after a strong streak, my creativity would disappear, never to return again.
I genuinely believed the muse needed perfect conditions, that she required spaciousness, inspiration, a certain aesthetic backdrop.
I’d be stressed anytime I didn’t feel like it had the “right environment” to express (hence my meltdown on the runway).
But when I eventually loosened the grip on what it needed to be creative, I realised there really was no rhyme or reason at all.
I’ve written when I’ve been wildly dysregulated, anxious and stressed, furiously pouring that anxiety onto the page, and then read it back later and realised the urgency in it was exactly what made it powerful.
I’ve written in chaos, with shouting in the background and four businesses operating in the house, and refused to stop because I knew if I did, I’d lose the thread.
I’ve written from the kind of pure joy and happiness that drenches the page with a kind of aliveness that almost feels impossible to capture.
I’ve written from deep heartbreak, the kind that feels like you’ve been torn in two, thinking I was too broken to make sense, but instead producing musings I’d still read to myself, like a lullaby, years later.
Other times, I’m in a meditative state and the words feel like painting a blank canvas.
Then there are times like tonight, when I’m delirious and questioning if these streams of sentences even make sense.
Of course, there’s no “right” environment to create in.
Because the muse isn’t fragile.
We’ve just been taught to mould her until she is.
We’ve been conditioned to contort her, to make her clearer, more concise, more optimised, more palatable.
But when we loosen that grip and give her the space she begs for, it becomes apparent that she has a lot to say, regardless of the conditions she finds herself in.
And that’s what this integration is asking me to sit with.
The truth is, I created The Marketing Muse for this very moment.
For the moments when I feel like my creativity is lost.
For the times I question what I have to say.
For the days when I don’t doubt what I do, but I do doubt if I can capture it.
Because marketing in the absence of creativity is just words on a page.
People might get it, but they won’t feel it.
They might understand your work, but they won’t see themselves within it.
They might see the truth in your words, but won’t let it filter into their own life.
And that gap is creatively alive marketing.
I was craving a space where I could breathe life into my best ideas, the ones that are already there, already alive within me, but get stuck in a bottleneck when it comes to expression.
A space that brings me back to the understanding that I already have everything I need within me. That I don’t need another shiny strategy. That I don’t need to contort my voice to fit someone else’s formula.
And of course, when you share something with the world, it’s going to make sure you walk the walk of it first.
So, that’s what I’m doing.
Musing in the messiness of it all.
And on that note, this week’s episode meets me right in that messiness (as my podcast tends to).
If you’ve been doubting your creativity…
If you’ve been waiting for the right environment…
If you’ve convinced yourself you can’t create here…
