On honouring our creative energies

When I was 16 I made a huge mistake.

I swung wildly off my path, sacrificing my creative soul at the altar of making money.

Believing it was the right decision for my fictional future self, I left behind the arts and chose to study maths, economics and science.

About three weeks later, the gut punch from realising I was way out of my depth and hated every moment in classroom was swift and severe.

I craved books and sketching, essays and paint, while equations and theories swam listlessly before my eyes.

After too many sleepless nights, I sat in the headteacher's office explaining sheepishly why I wanted to drop all my courses and replace them with completely different ones. Completely unprofitable ones. Courses that probably wouldn’t get me a university place or a job or… anything.

But walking into the gouache-strewn art room just a few days later felt like coming home.

Even at that young age, I knew the consequences of living unauthentically.

Roll forward a few thousand years and 2025 is my year of nourishing creativity.

Why? Because despite my younger self knowing those consequences, older me still ignores them.

Of course, we need to make money to live in the world, eat, drink, wear eyeliner. And I did exactly that for years (until we dropped everything and moved to China, but that’s a different story).

I worked in the city for companies small and large, started my own business, became the director for another, helped people (I hope).

And I put my creative soul in a box on the shelf, telling her that I’d be back when I had more time.

Even during Covid when others used the time to explore new paths, I doubled down and pushed through.

Until I didn’t.

Talking about perimenopause changing our lives has almost become a cliche (after not being talked about AT ALL) but it’s true - it hit me hard and without warning when so much else was slapping us in the face.

Even so it’s taken me a few years to learn the lesson of slowing down, bringing my creative soul down off the shelf and letting her run around for a while.

We’re rediscovering each other slowly—whether that's simply covering a page of my journal with stickers or doodles, playing with watercolours, or losing myself in sketching workshops on YouTube.

What was a ‘maybe sometime’ is a firm ‘now’ as I slot short artists' dates with myself around writing, podcasting and adulting.

Isn’t writing creative? Of course, but its energy isn’t always the same.

My birthday tarot reading brought Temperance calling with her focus on harmony, balance and blending energies. “If something feels off, it probably is off,” she says. And I realised then that everything I do has it’s own energy.

At the moment I’m in outlining mode for my next book which has a completely different energy to sketching. Podcast editing has a different energy to free-writing. Scrolling on my phone has a different energy to reading a book. Not worse or better. Just different.

I'm slowly learning to honour my different creative energies when planning out my week, following the peaks and flows of each day. I set a forest app timer for 30 to 60 minutes so I can limit my time on work that is mentally tiring and take a creative break to restore my balance.

It's a work in progress, but so far temperance is winning.

Some questions for you:

How do you honour your creative energies?

Do you push through or recognise where you’re depleted and take a different path?

Can you plan your week around your creative energy peaks and troughs?

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