If you’re a creative looking to hone your craft, please don’t take the easy way out.

How embracing your journey can set you free!

I believe the best thing we can do for ourselves, as creatives, is to reflect.

It’s how we manage to improve our craft over time. Yet, lots of folks will avoid their past work like the plague. It’s one thing to casually mention your previous work on a brand. It’s another to dig up that work and put her under a microscope. Yikes.

To me it feels like, as time passes, my portfolio begins to look more and more like a reflection in a fun-house mirror. Warped, surprising, easy to scoff at. It’s as if I believed the younger version of myself was worth less. When really, that diva just didn’t have all her tools yet for crying out loud!

I think this pseudo-inadequacy is partially a symptom of, you guessed it, the internet! We’re afraid to show the messiness of growth. We fear how process fits into our aesthetic. And now we’re all suffering from Greatest Hits syndrome, causing us to carefully curate only what we think is acceptable for the judgement of others (strangers).

So if you’ve ever found yourself in a similar funk, here’s some food for thought: I believe to solely criticize your younger self is to take the easy way out. It’s low-hanging fruit. And I think it’s far more impressive to own it – where you were and where you’ve been. And if you can manage to balance them, that is the true measure of meaningful reflection.

This blog is dedicated to that delicate balance.

It’s an attempt to balance the good, bad, and ugly of my personal, creative, and professional metamorphosis. It’s candid and messy and fascinating and scary. I am not sure how I ever believed a career could be anything else! And that is why a diva must reflect.