Recently, I began painting.
Not because I expect to become a fine artist or because I need another career. Something inside me simply whispered: How about this?
So, here I am making marks—paint on paper, words on pages, ideas becoming visible.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about mark making, not only on paper, but in life. Maybe that’s what creativity really is: bringing the inner outward.
MARK MAKING
Many people believe creativity belongs to “creative people”—artists, designers, writers, performers—while quietly deciding it doesn’t belong to them.
Meanwhile, others conclude: I’m not creative.
Whenever I hear that, I find myself wondering what happened. Somewhere along the way, many people were taught imagination had an expiration date. Play became frivolous. Creativity became something reserved for the talented few rather than something deeply human.
Children create before self-surveillance arrives. Then, over time, many of us begin observing ourselves instead of expressing ourselves.
We traded wonder for self-consciousness.
A RETURN TO PLAY
At this stage of life, I’m less interested in perfection and far more interested in aliveness. That changes everything.
For years, I created through fashion, design, writing, and Word Art. Painting calls me into unfamiliar territory on purpose. Not every creative act needs to arrive carrying pressure, productivity, or proof. Sometimes curiosity knocks, and something inside us answers. Sometimes we follow the whisper simply to discover where it leads.
I think many of us are hungry for that kind of freedom—a six-year-old’s sense of wonder with an adult heart. Modern art meets a childlike hand.
Honestly? It’s playtime, baby.
True self-expression often becomes true self-discovery.
MAKING A MARK
Not every mark belongs on a canvas.
We make marks in conversations, relationships, homes, and in the atmosphere we create around us. Through love and attention. Through the energy we carry into a room. And through the way people feel in our presence long after we’ve gone.
When someone lives with joy, curiosity, creativity, or wonder, others can feel it. It invites them to breathe a little deeper into their own lives, too.
That may be one of the most beautiful marks we make.
A meaningful life is often shaped by the whispers we choose to follow: take the class, buy the paints, dance anyway, write the poem, sing again, begin before confidence arrives.
Somewhere along the way, many of us became careful instead of curious. We learned to monitor ourselves rather than explore ourselves.
Maybe making a mark has very little to do with mastery. Maybe it begins the moment we stop standing outside our lives evaluating everything, and step back into direct participation.
And perhaps many of us are longing less for polished lives and more for the feeling of being fully alive inside them.
~ ✦ ~
P.S. There may still be a part of you living beneath practicality, responsibility, self-consciousness, or the belief that it’s simply “too late.” A softer, wilder, more curious part.
The part that still wonders what might happen if you followed joy a little further. Maybe nothing extraordinary happens. Maybe something beautiful does. Either way, you would meet more of yourself along the way—and that alone feels worth making a few marks for.