I forgot my life was about me
For a long time, I believed I was a side character in my own life.
Not in a dramatic, film-worthy way. There was no single moment where sad music played and I realised I had forgotten who I was, while the rain poured all around me, but that would've been cool, if a little questionable for my sanity.
Instead, it happened quietly.
I became the person who tried to support everyone else, tried being the key word here. The person who worried about upsetting people, disappointing everyone, even strangers or taking up too much space. I thought about how every decision might affect someone else, but rarely stopped to ask how it affected me.
Somewhere between trying to be helpful, agreeable, low-maintenance and impossible to criticise (but people still found a way) I became a little bit blank, like a dusty canvas at the back of an abandoned art studio.
I had ideas, opinions, even things I wanted to write, make, photograph and explore, ideas I wanted to bring to life with an abundance of vibrancy and colour. But, every single idea was followed by another thought.
What will people think?
And that question stopped me for years, solidified me in place, not moving forward or back.
Where it began
I have wanted to write, or be something that resembled a writer since High School, after I lost myself in books that made the world melt away, replaced by myths, dragons, heroes and villains.
I would have ideas at inconvenient times. Sentences would appear while I was trying to sleep, in the shower, of course, where there was no where to write. I would draft whole paragraphs in my head while walking somewhere, doing tedious chores or pretending to pay attention to something else. I created worlds in my mind, while my face showed compliance.
I bought notebooks.
So many, many, many notebooks.
Some were too nice to use, which is possibly one of the most ridiculous problems a person can create for themselves, but here we are. I wanted to write in them, but I also did not want to ruin them with handwriting, crossed-out sentences or thoughts that were not important enough. Scribbles that would ruin them and their perfection. I also didn’t want to ruin the stories I created in my head by trying to replicate them on paper, I wanted to do them justice.
I created notes on my phone, started documents, planned blogs and imagined entire books like movies in my mind.
Then I would reread what I had written and decide it was embarrassing, not good enough….
or too obvious
…. badly phrased
………not as clever as something somebody else had already said.
So I stopped.
I told myself I would come back to it when I was more confident, when I knew more, when I had a better plan, when my writing sounded more polished, when I understood exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted people to receive it.
When, when, when, when….
Essentially, I was waiting to become a person who could create without feeling afraid. That person never arrived. I didn't magically wake up one day and feel like I was the best writer known to mankind (I literally rewrote that sentence due to spelling mistakes).
Perfectionism did a very good impression of patience. For years, I told myself I was not ready. That sounded sensible, responsible, even, like this is what every writer does, they postpone their own journey. I just needed to learn more before writing about anything. I needed a proper strategy, the perfect website, the perfect logo, the perfect ideas and some kind of guarantee that people would like what I made.
But perfectionism has a clever way of disguising itself. Sometimes it looks like high standards, preparation. Sometimes it sounds like, “I’ll begin when I have more time.” But underneath all of that, I was scared, paralysed by fear and so worried about being perfect I just stopped myself from starting. I was so scared that somebody would look at something I had made and wonder why I thought it was worth sharing. Scared that my work would never compare to the work of people who seemed more talented, more confident, more interesting and much further ahead, just people who were much more.
I was comparing the first uncertain thought in my head with somebody else’s finished, polished work. From that mindset, obviously, mine never felt good enough, it had barely been given a chance to exist, let alone be refined.
I just forgot that my life was allowed to be about me, that every imperfection counted. That sentence makes me cringe slightly.
“My life is about me” sounds self-centred when you say it without context. It sounds like something a villain in an action movie would announce immediately before destroying an entire city. But I do not mean that other people do not matter, they do, we all matter. What I mean is that I spent so much time considering everybody else that I forgot I was also a person in the room, that deserved to take up space.
I forgot that I was allowed to have preferences without defending them
I was allowed to change my mind
I was allowed to try something and be bad at it
I was allowed to say no
I was allowed to make decisions that did not make complete sense to everyone else
I was allowed to create things simply because I wanted to
I was allowed to take up space in my own story
I was allowed.
For a long time, I thought my role was to push everybody else’s story forward, to support, encourage, to make things easier for others, to be useful in their story, and there is nothing wrong with being supportive or caring, there is nothing wrong with doing all the above. Those are parts of myself I never want to lose, but I had quietly turned myself into an extra. A person standing in the background of her own life, waiting for somebody else to decide what happened next.
Quiet does not mean empty
I have always been a quiet person. I know, a strange way to start the next section, but bear with me, this will all make sense soon.
Sometimes people assume quietness means you are not interested, that you have no opinions, that you are not paying attention or have nothing to contribute. In reality, my mind is rarely quiet.
There are normally several thoughts swirling around my head, all competing for centre stage. I am listening to what somebody is saying, wondering whether I understood them correctly, deciding how to respond, questioning whether my response will sound strange and trying to work out whether this is a serious moment or a funny moment. By the time I have processed all of that, the conversation may have moved on entirely. So I remain silent.
So, being quiet does not mean I have nothing to say, in fact, it can mean I have so much to say that I do not know where to begin. And yes, I ramble, as you can tell if you've gotten this far. (well done by the way) This may seem unusual for someone who can sit silently in a group for an impressive amount of time, but give me somewhere to write and apparently every thought I have ever had wants to come out at once.
That is part of what this space is for, the world I am trying to build.
It is somewhere for the thoughts I could not quite say in the moment, the things I understood hours later, the feelings that did not fit into a normal conversation, and the realisations that arrived after I had already said, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Why The Quiet Creative exists
The Quiet Creative is not here because I have figured everything out. I have not, I really haven't, in fact I feel like I'm more confused about life than I was a few years ago. I am not writing from the other side of anxiety with a neat list of steps that will make everything disappear, because believe me, it's not, even if I did write a list.
I am still learning how my own mind works. I am trying to understand why certain things overwhelm me and why apparently simple tasks can sometimes feel impossibly heavy. I am learning how to rest without feeling guilty. How to be creative without needing to be impressive. How to speak without rehearsing every possible reaction. I’m still learning how to connect with people without assuming I am disturbing or annoying them, and how to make decisions without asking an imaginary audience for approval first.
This website is where I am going to talk about all of that.
The anxiety
The quietness
The work struggles
The hobbies I start with enormous enthusiasm before discovering that being a beginner is personally offensive to me
The crafts that go wrong, and some that go right
The photographs I capture and attempt to edit
The places I visit
The money lessons I am still learning (so many)
The process of trying to buy a first home without any external help
The appointments, admin and general adulthood knowledge we were somehow expected to acquire without anyone properly teaching us
Some posts may be thoughtful, hopefully practical, maybe even funny because honestly, sometimes laughing at the chaos is the only reasonable response. While some posts may simply be me trying to put a feeling into words in the hope that somebody else reads it and thinks, I thought that was only me. Which would be the ideal outcome as someone who can feel incredibly isolated in her thinking.
Becoming more me
The words I have chosen for The Quiet Creative are: Becoming more me. As you'd probably be able to see. Not finding myself, exactly, as that makes it sound as though there is one complete, confident version of me hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered like a set of lost keys. I think it is more complicated than that.
Maybe becoming more yourself is not about uncovering one perfect identity, maybe it’s about slowly noticing what feels right.
What brings you energy
What makes you curious?
What do you miss when it is absent?
What do you keep returning to, even after fear has convinced you to stop?
Becoming more me might look like writing this post and publishing it before I can edit every trace of vulnerability out of it, even thought it's been sat in my drafts for a while (1 month and counting). It might look like trying hobbies without turning them into a business plan, or continuing them even if I'm not good at them. Taking photographs because something looked beautiful, and it doesn't matter if they are a little out of focus, or just plain bad photos.
Visiting somewhere new, even if I feel nervous, and sharing what I loved, sharing an opinion without apologising for having one, even admitting when something is difficult, even if others find it easier.
Allowing myself to be seen, even if I remain anonymous for now. Choosing a life that feels like mine rather than one that simply looks acceptable from the outside. None of these things seem like dramatic transformations, but there are to me.
There will be no killer movie montage, where everything is achieved within minutes. I will not wake up tomorrow completely confident, free from anxiety and somehow able to answer unexpected phone calls without staring at the screen in horror. (Let's be real, I don't answer those calls).
It will happen slowly.
Quietly.
Through small decisions that remind me I am here too. Beginning before I feel ready. I still care what people think, I would love to say that starting The Quiet Creative means I have suddenly stopped fearing judgement, comparison or failure. Sadly, I have not.
Part of me is already imagining every possible reaction to this post, or lack there of if I'm honest. Maybe somebody will think it is self-indulgent, maybe nobody will read it, maybe people will read it and feel absolutely nothing. Maybe I will look back at it in six months and wish I had written it differently, which is highly likely.
But I do not want fear to make every decision for me anymore. I do not want to spend another few years waiting to become brave enough to begin. Maybe bravery is not the absence of all those thoughts, instead, maybe it is publishing the post while they are still talking.
This website, and the platforms surrounding it, is me choosing to start before I feel completely ready.
It is me learning that quiet people are still allowed to take up space, create things, change their minds, make mistakes and become the main characters of their own lives. I do not know exactly where this will lead, and I think that is sort of the point.
So, if you have made it this far, welcome to The Quiet Creative.
Join me for the chaos, the quiet moments, the late learning, the unfinished hobbies, the gentle adventures, the anxious spirals, the honest reflections and the tiny brave decisions.
I am trying to become more me.
Maybe we can do it together.
