Does love affect your creativity? I believe it does. When it is given correctly, it feels like the possibilities are endless. But when not, it leaves us feeling confused and questioning ourselves. Personally, I think there is a correlation between how we question ourselves in our relationships and how we begin to question ourselves in other areas of our lives.
In the 70-something days, I have taken to myself, I have finally gotten my creativity back. It’s been missing for a year, which is how long my last relationship was but the year did not run simultaneously if that makes sense. However, the math is “mathing” to me, and it’s telling me that part of the stagnancy and lack of confidence I was feeling was due to my situationship.
I know that when the love is good, my ideas flow.
I have not been able to write or publish a new issue because I have been uninspired. Even as I now type, I recall how I wondered about this before, during the relationship, but I dismissed those thoughts. Now I realize that was my intuition all along, and unfortunately, I ignored it the way I have been doing it.
Throughout my 90-day journey, I have gained lots of clarity in various aspects of my life. Things I have pondered on for some time suddenly make sense. I’ve shared publicly about how I lost clients, had to review my overhead, and cut team members’ hours. I also lost 10lbs, which was actually a good thing. But my point is that I lost a lot during this period, and I was uncomfortable, but I stuck it out, and I got the biggest gift I have received in a long time, my creativity back!
I used to get up every morning excited to get to work and do the things that I love, but in about October 2021, I stopped being able to get up. By this summer, I was waking up at 8 AM. I was so angry inside, and I was angry with God.
Then I finally decided to pick myself up and get my life back.
I walked to make sure I was spending time in nature and getting out of the house because nature itself is inspiring. The Louisiana walk was hot, and I would trick myself into completing my two miles, but then I began to go home and do yoga later in the day. I journaled when my emotions got to be too much. And when I realized I still could not handle it all, I scheduled an appointment with the diagnostician and admitted that I thought I needed to get back on my bipolar medication.
And here we are. For a while, I thought my medication prevented me from being creative. I now see it as being in a situation I did not belong in. And I am not trying to fault my ex. I take responsibility because, at one point, I even accepted that I might never be happy in life and love. I lost hope, and I settled into conditions that I was not pleased with. I was not loving myself.
How could I be creative under those circumstances? It was hard because I need my creativity to live. It’s how I make my money and lead my teams. My creativity, hence my happiness, came at the price of deciding to do something for myself because I thought it would make me happy, and it has gone beyond that.
To be clear, I am not saying God did not have a hand in this because He certainly did. I know that this was all His doing- the highs and the lows. I think it is important to state that part because I am not an “I”, “I”, “I” -person. I think God wanted to make some things clear to me, and I had to be dang near desperate and lacking creativity to sit down and pay attention, but I finally did. I needed to be reminded that the love of self is always the most important. No one else can give you what you need. You are responsible for that.
And for a while, I was so dependent on the love of someone else, hoping it would fuel me in the ways I needed to be fueled. When in actuality, I had to power myself. I had to love myself again.
If you would like to learn more about my 90-day journey, here’s the playlist. This is the first vlog.
