Maturing into Life as a Creative

Eventually, I gathered the courage to bump it up a notch. I began asking for payment for my content. I started small, by asking for $200 for a weekend’s worth of coverage on my platforms. My plan was to slowly bump up the amount as time went on. I had no idea what to charge in reality. But my whole world changed when I made a typo. I sent an email to a small town in VA offering to do what I do. I thought I typed $300 as my fee. But in reality, I had typed $3,000. They replied and said that they couldn’t afford $3,000, but they’d do it for $2,000. My jaw hit the floor, and I quit my teaching job that week. I did this full-time for a year after that.

The fact that I made my dreams a reality is an accomplishment that I do hold very close to my heart. Opening the door to my creative side and allowing my love for creating and sharing the beauty of this world was one of the best things I ever did for myself in the long run. I write all of this and hope it is an inspiration to believe in yourself, and your power, and to go after what you truly love. However, the truth of my story doesn’t end there.

Eventually, I was sharing every second of my life on the internet. Appearing to be the perfect girl with the perfect life was my job. And eventually, it became too much. I had created this online persona and people had an expectation of who I was. Over time, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. There was a happy, smiling, fake version of myself on the internet that everyone loved. But I wasn’t sure if I loved her anymore. I began isolating myself in real life. I became depressed and confused. I destroyed relationships with others because I wasn’t even confident in the relationship I had with myself. I didn’t actually know what I liked or wanted anymore. And as crazy as it might sound, COVID-19 saved my life.

When the pandemic hit and the world shut down, I wasn’t able to travel anymore. Everyone’s budget shrank because no one knew what was going to happen next. In many ways, I was terrified because I didn’t know how I was going to survive financially.

Fast forward a few months, I began a relationship with my now Husband. He has a miraculous life story of his own. But at this time, he owned a Food Truck called Nana Karen’s Cruisin’ Kitchen. We were able to relate to the fact that we both quit our “day jobs” to start our own businesses and be our own bosses. And he was also at a crossroads in his own life with the pandemic.

Long story short, we decided after only 2 months of dating to open a restaurant here in Danville called Nana Karen’s on Main. His knowledge of food, the restaurant industry, and accounting paired with my knowledge of social media marketing, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking has been the perfect recipe for something beautiful from the beginning.

We’ve now been open for almost 2 years. I’d be lying if I said these 2 years have been easy, but they’ve always been worth it. Everything I had experienced up until this made me realize that I needed to focus on simply being myself and taking inventory of my emotions. I had to rebuild my relationship with myself and my own personality.

I am now able to work in a space that I love, with people that I love, building relationships in the community, all while being creative in every area of my life. I’ve even let myself slow down enough to get back to enjoying art for art’s sake. I paint, write, read, and create to express my emotions - good, bad, and ugly. I’ve grown enough in my creativity to use it to push myself forward, but also to slow myself down when needed. And most importantly for me, I now create for myself, no one else.

In my experience, being a creative is associated with a heightened feeling of emotions, and that can feel like both a blessing and a curse. I’ve had to accept that being a creative means seeing the entire world with color. And that comes with a level of feeling misunderstood by the rest of the world that seems to be so black and white. We feel internally conflicted by what we feel and what we see. We have this internal craving to find more than meets the eye in this life, and if we can’t find it then we will create it. So in order to become productive members of society, we have to learn to harness it. Because that internal desire to create will drive everything that we do. We can either let it run wild and fill our life with chaos, or we can learn to manage our emotions and use the creative process as an outlet.

I can now say that I’m very proud of my journey. And I personally owe it all to God, for both giving me the spiritual gift of creativity and for helping me navigate life until I was mature enough to understand it. And the main thing I want anyone to get out of this article is simple, you’re not alone and your story isn’t over.