Art for the Sake of You

Create art. In any form you’d like. Whether it’s writing, cooking, rearranging your room, dancing, or building. This is the best advice I’ve learned over the years.

Though I’ve always had the need to create something, I often chose not to, because I thought it was a waste of time. If I wrote a song and no one except me knew about it, then what was the point? As if doing something just for the sake of doing it and enjoying it felt wrong. Or if I drew something and it didn’t turn out to my liking, then I had just wasted valuable time.

How wrong I was, for me, at least.

I’ve come to see that the purpose of creating is so much more than external praise or outcomes. It has the power to turn your world upside down. It’s liberating. It quiets the mind and lets it focus on beauty, even when you temporarily can’t see any. It teaches you to be humble and patient, to enjoy the process of trying again, to actually trust the process of creation itself.

And when you do, you begin to see for yourself that growth comes with pain, and that it’s easy to give up before it’s done. But if you keep going, you taste the sweetness of rewarding yourself deeply in a way nothing else quite can. Because it’s something that’s only yours. Made by you, for you.

And maybe that’s why, for me, it feels so rare and precious. I don’t often allow myself to live or create just for me. So when I do, it’s one of the best feelings in the world.