My Creative Weirdo Story

When did you feel like you were different? What was something that separated you from others?

For me it was the combination of neurodivergence, introversion, and ignoring my creative spark. The fact that we encourage creativity in kids and then strongly discourage them when it’s time to start thinking about a sustainable career is a whole other topic that I could get into in another post.

If you want to learn more about my journey to fully accepting my creative weirdo tendencies keep reading.

Creative Kid

It seems really common for creativity to be seen as something worthwhile to pursue as long as you aren’t getting a job in the near future.

As a kid I was gifted all sorts of art and crafts supplies, attended art classes, and generally wasn’t told no when I wanted to try something new.

I remember a photo of me and my cousin, both around 5 years old, at Christmas getting these giant easels that towered over us.

I wasn’t the best or the worst at creating. I just had fun. Eventually my inner critic started showing up every time I made a mistake aka the perfectionism monster.

This led to me doing less creative projects or relegating them strictly to the weekend.

Between homework and extracurricular activities, band, choir and Girl Scouts, I didn’t really have the time or space to play around with my creative practices in the same way.

Teen Years

I’ve always been interested in writing and being a writer so that’s what I focused on in my teenage years.

Occasionally I made collages by cutting up fashion magazines to decorate my room but it wasn’t a regular thing.

I spent a lot of time reading also which took up most of my free time.

I’d recently started my reading love affair with Stephen King and was tearing through all his books available at my local library.

Even though his books could be terrifying they always played with showing the best and worst in people. The supernatural monsters were usually nothing compared to some of the people.

College Years

Barring my first semester, which was a big old mess by the end, I didn’t really have time to do anything creative beyond reading the occasional fiction book. Almost none of my courses were creative in nature minus a handful of English classes.

One of the exceptions was photojournalism. This is where I first learned about Photoshop and photography. I really loved taking photo and was less excited about the journalism part. I loved the camera I used in this class so much that my parents bought me one as a graduation gift.

After College

I graduated into the years when we were still recovering from the recession. Basically no one was hiring this class of graduates who had no experience and just degrees.

I stayed working at my retail job until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I started channeling my creative energy while job searching into writing a novel. Writing and reading were my creative outlets until design came along.

I tried out a few different part time jobs before landing on my first full time job. It was in an office doing pretty easy work. That’s my nice way of saying I got bored fast. After a couple of years, I was ready to move on but couldn’t find anything even after a few different interviews.

I decided to try out some of those creative hobbies and skills that I didn’t get a chance to in college. Anything to escape the mundane boredom of my 9 to 5. I started learning about design, a subject that had always intrigued me but I had convinced myself there was no way I could do it. Like everyone doesn’t start as a beginner.

Business Owner

After joining a graphic design Meetup group and learning web design by creating my first website the pandemic hit. For the first time my full time job was fully remote. I finally had the time and bandwidth to think about the next moves in my career and life.

For me, working remote made me way more productive and a lot less stressed. I didn’t realize how much my commute and the office environment were stressing me out and giving me sensory overload. I’m looking at you fluorescent lighting.

One of my friends in the Meetup group freelanced while working full time and started her own business. It started to seem like a better idea to me vs working a 9 to 5 forever. So I started building my web design business on the side while working remote.

Now I get to be creative all the time in my business, life, and hobbies. I’m exclusively working on Redesignia with a few side hustles thrown in. I would never have this amount of time to dedicate to things outside of work without being a business owner.

Are You A Creative Weirdo?

If you’re a creative weirdo like me who loves to use their creativity in life and business, consider this your invite to hop on a coffee chat with me. I’d love to connect and collaborate!