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What would you tell your younger self about the creative journey?
Taking stock of the creative journey so far with the passing of another birthday.
When I was a teenager, I wrote a letter to my future self. In it, I expressed a variety of hopes and wishes, and things that I wanted to remind myself to take action on. When I re-read the letter years later, I was surprised by the things that still felt vitally important, and the things that had fallen away to time. I felt at the moment of reading that I had done something important by taking the time to pin point what I wanted and where I hoped to end up. Despite forgetting what I’d exactly written, the intentions were set.
This week, I celebrate a birthday. As you get older, birthdays do seem to lose their shine — not because of the ageing; I was never a comfortable young person, so for me, ageing out of my teens and twenties has been welcome. But lately, I have been struggling to imagine my future. A birthday inevitably prompts reflection, and I’ve found myself measuring up against the past recently and feeling as though I’ve fallen short — like I should have or could have done more in the time that I had. My younger, more hopeful self had a lot of ideas and dreams. Have I been good to that younger self? And what am I measuring this against, exactly?
