It’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when.’

One day, in spite of your best efforts to create a safe space for you, your loved ones, your career, and your mental health — sometimes it all just breaks apart. When this happens, you can’t stop it. You just have to move through it.

You lose your sister to cancer.

You’re forced to quit a job you love.

You take another job you don’t love to keep the lights on.

You lose some of your confidence.

You stop doing the thing you love: creating.

Sometimes all this happens to you in one fell swoop. That’s precisely what happened to me.

I’ve written about my sister’s death in other forums. It was harrowing. Anyone who goes through this kind of grief knows that losing someone to another existential plane— regardless of where your metaphysical or anti-metaphysical leanings take you — is brutal. It knocks the wind out of you for a bit.

From the time I learned that we die — right around my 5-year mark on this planet —I’ve been fighting to wrap my brain and heart around it. For a long while, I immersed my psyche into religious texts and principles hoping to find peace and acceptance. It just made it all way more complicated, so hit the ‘eject button.’ Grief is hard no matter what you believe or don’t believe.

Then I knew I had to quit a job I loved. The end of an era was rapidly approaching. I was leading enterprise creative for a well-known EdTech brand. I loved my team. We were doing great work. We were challenging the brand. We were moving onward and upward. We were stretching our creative muscles. We were turning heads. It was exciting.

But I saw the writing on the wall. The company was going to be sold, and my team was going to be leveled for no other reason than ‘just because.’ I hate being right about these things. I handed in my resignation and a few weeks later I got word that the entire creative org got the bulldozer treatment with a severance package.

Then I took a job that just wasn’t a good fit. There’s nothing more to say. Sometimes, despite your best effort to read a room, you misread things and the room misreads you. And it ends up being a bad fit. That’s what happened. The end. No drama. No bad blood — just an obvious mismatch.

At that time, I lost my confidence. I was grieving. I was waffling about in a professional place I did not belong. I was losing my ground.

Everything went wrong. It was hard, and I lost my way a bit. But through it all, I learned some things. If you’re alive you’re learning. That’s just how it goes.

Here’s what I learned during this time.

1. Self-love is non-negotiable. I was terrible at this. I saw my shortcomings as part of my identity. I saw my grief as who I was, not something I was experiencing, and turned all my pent-up anger inward. Nothing halts your creative brain like self-flagellation.
2. Above all, be kind to the people around you. I was also very bad at this. I saved some of the inward anger for other people I felt weren’t fulfilling my needs. Did I communicate what I needed at that time? Absolutely not! I’m a tough guy. I got this. I’m a self-made man, or whatever. As a byproduct, I treated people poorly. My co-workers. My family. My partner. My friends. I was being selfish in my grief.
3. Get help, goddamnit. You need it. You’re not weak. You’re human. Ask for a hand. Stop trying to go it alone. It’s hard to ask. Just do it. Surprise yourself.
4. Be patient. No moment, feeling, or circumstance is forever. “This, too, shall pass” etc. You will emerge victorious, or at least functional, and with some measure of peace.

What does this have to do with being creative? Everything. Sometimes the pain isn’t a good catalyst for creativity. Sometimes life steals so much joy that it feels impossible to move forward — to create, evolve, and bring your magic into the world. You need to take this time to learn, grow, and heal. I did not, and I deeply regret it.

That’s all I’ve got. Thanks for listening.