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What I Make When I’m Not Trying to Impress Anyone
What childhood creativity can teach us about showing up now
At dinner last night, Seth and I had one of those conversations that really linger. The kind where you find yourself still turning it over in your mind the next day, like a stone you can’t stop touching.
We were talking about creativity, specifically how freeing it can feel to create outside of the intention to impress anyone else. Not your audience. Not your peers. Not even yourself, but simply for its own sake. It reminded me of what it was like to be a kid, long before I knew a damn thing about coolness, trends, or social media algorithms.
I didn’t wonder whether something I wanted to make was worth my time or care whether I had permission from the right people to do it in the first place. I just made things. And then sometimes I showed them to other people with unshakeable pride, never even considering that they might not think it was any good.
Bad poetry. Weird Lincoln Log creations. Silly stories about my toys that almost certainly contained way too many references to farts and burps. A set of homemade mini-books about my family and friends, hand-illustrated and lovingly “bound” with construction paper and staples. They were definitely the creations of a little kid still figuring…
