If I reflect back to when I was my most creative, it would be twelve years ago. I was twenty years old, in the throes of finishing my Bachelor’s degree. I was still living with my parents then, as my university’s campus was only a 20-minute motorbike ride away. My room was (and still is today) painted a bright royal blue on all four walls. Posters of my favourite books were plastered on the walls, some as big as A1 size, and my shelves were filled with fiction books. I was gaming a lot still back then, and I was writing constantly. It was around that time that I churned my longest story, hitting around 250k words.
Then I graduated. And started working.
As a major in English for Professional Communication, I was pulled instantly into the corporate sector. I started my career in training and development, which I loved, but boy did it sap my creativity. Language-wise, I was limited to concise, precise, corporate speak. Emails needed to be short, simple and straightforward. There was little wriggle room to write about swords and magic in an atmosphere where efficiency and value proposition conquered.
Physically, I had my own cubicle, which was the furthest from being creative or inspirational as it could be. I could barely remember what my work desk looked like then, but I know for sure there was nothing creative on display. If anything, it would be filled with papers and post-it notes, left behind my colleagues who needed to reach or remind me of one thing or another.
I left the corporate sector not long after, in pursuit of different interests and passions. I ventured into counselling, then sales, then education. I also did a stint in setting up a rather successful freelance business, if I do say so myself. I also had a bit of exposure in retail.
Finally, I ventured into the next worst thing for creativity: academia. This was in 2019.
I’ve been a lecturer for six years now and have not been that creative at all. There have been stints here and there, of course. I try to be fun and creative in my classes, but that’s different from the creativity that can present itself when you have a nice blank page to work with. The papers I write have been purely academic, filled with in-text citations and academic references. In these publications, I cannot say, for example, that reading improves writing. I need to prove the claim, with citations ranging from old to new (to show continuity) that support the notion that reading improves writing – even if the statement I’m making is common sense. Put simply, academic writing is dry, tedious, and as far removed from creative as I could get.
I did write a lot, though, don’t get me wrong. My most recent work was 100k words long.
(It was my doctoral thesis lol)
When I submitted by thesis in August of 2024 this, my faculty thought it would be cool/funny/fitting to place me in a position where day in and day out, I need to vet test papers and dive even deeper into the academic side of academia. I felt my soul shriveling like a prune. My husband comments, almost every other day, how I unhappy I seem to be with this role. And that is the truth of it. I have been extremely unhappy, for years now, and have not felt in the least bit creative in any of my career pursuits.
After some thought, I decided that it’s time for a change. I’m done with my PhD, which has been my excuse for letting my hobbies go for years now. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up making my career as my excuse as well. And I don’t want that.
This website was set up as an outlet for me to write and exercise some creativity. I want to talk about writing, about storytelling. I want to write about what I know, and what I’ve been learning with regards to writing.
One of the reasons why I have been so un-creative, I suppose, is because of my surroundings. My personal space, which is devoid of colour or anything inspirational.
As an exercise in writing, and to visually depict to you why such a setup is so uninspiring for creativity, let me describe to you what my current office space looks like.
My office is located on the second floor of our building, in a corner. It’s a comfortable room, no doubt. There is a dark blue armchair where I would curl up reading a book if there’s a lull in work. I can’t exactly complain, because my previous office has no armchair, but the chair itself is made of the hard faux leather that can get cold and squeaks if I twist and turn in it. It’s not an ideal shape or size to nap in either – I’ve tried.
My desk is actually two desks, placed adjacent each other to form a productive L shape. I have an extra monitor connected to my laptop, because every productive person would have that. There’s also a telephone that has never rung in the four months I’ve been here. Papers litter my table. There’s a round stress ball that I sometimes play with. A couple of vitamin bottles that remind me to be healthy, but I never consume them. Apart from that, my desk is unremarkable. I have one picture, of myself and a colleague, at an event we attended last year. I have no idea why I have that picture out – probably a sad attempt to decorate a bit before deciding it was a moot effort.
I sit facing the right wall of the office rather than the door. You see, right outside my door is the small drinks station with a kettle and 3-in-1 packets, which people access regularly enough. So that can be distracting. To me, it’s better to face the wall and have my headphones on, very unsociable-like.
If I look up, I see a sad attempt at cheeriness. There’s a clock, whose face is the colors of the rainbow. But from the day I came into this office, the clock has never worked. It is constantly showing 1:36PM – the time of day where you’d groan because the first half of your lunch break is over. On my left is a large pegboard, filled with papers from the previous coordinator that I’ve never removed because I don’t do papers well. There’s a poster in black, red and orange, stuck onto the pegboard, which says, “GET FOCUSED. WHEN OBSTACLES ARISE, YOU CHANGE YOUR DIRECTION TO REACH YOUR GOAL. YOU DON’T CHANGE YOUR DECISION TO GET THERE.”
Inspiring. Truly.
The walls of this room are white. There are cabinets filled with a whole load of files that I have never looked at, nor do I know what its contents are. If I look out my window, I get a decent view of the parking lot, which is useful for me to keep an eye out in case it floods during heavy rains. But apart from that… that’s it. That’s my office where I sit to do work most of my weeks.
There are many reasons why I haven’t been creative all these years. Why I have felt so uninspired to write or produce art. These past few years, I have lost myself in work. I was adjusting to married and motherhood life. I made numerous career changes, and we moved houses twice. Then bought and renovated a house. There was also my PhD, which had taken up five years of my life. I am finally, however, at a point where I want to venture into doing creative work again. A simple fix would at least be to do something with my office space that I’ve just described to you.
I should decorate my space a bit. Print some posters from my favourite settings, or have some book covers around. I need some colour and creativity. And I need to start writing, which I can now do in this website.
If I am to keep up with this writing thing, I need to feel inspired. I’ll check in again when I’ve made my spot a little more inspiring.
Till then.