The Cost of Creation [from a Creative]

There are few feelings on Earth like getting zapped with a good idea.

Something you know you have to create, or you will feel restless, incomplete, and insufferable until you do.

From that initial idea hit, figuring out a plan, gathering materials, and strategizing the execution.

Working. Refining. Reworking. Picking it apart. Hating it. Rearranging. Tweaking.

Throwing the whole thing out. Taking a break. Picking it out of the metaphorical trash.

Backing up. Squinting. Seeing it clearly.

Suddenly knowing what it needs.

Learning to love your creation. Or working on it until you do.

After it's done, you get to say, "I made that", and then give it away, share it, sell it, or lock it in a vault just for you.

But that creation, whatever it is, always asks for something in return. Time, energy, money.

And you never really know what the cost of creation is until after you've paid it.

Changing Through Creation

You don't have to be a creative visionary to be creative. Creativity, at the end of the day, is a skill everyone can access if you're willing to look for what lights you up.

Painting. Beading. Singing. Cooking. Anything that makes the hours disappear and quiets the noise in your head.

That’s where change begins, not with the outcome, but with the pause, the presence, and the process itself. When you show up to make something, it makes you feel better and changes you on a molecular level.

Studies show that regular creative practice, like painting, drawing, singing, whatever your thing is, rewires your brain within just a few months. Especially in the parts tied to emotion, memory, and decision-making.

You're not the same person you were before any completed project. Maybe it's not noticeable, maybe it's the tiniest microscopic change, but it's there, and if you love your creation enough, it grows in spades.

That microscopic change is where the light gets in.

Keeping a Creative Light in Times of Darkness

I think everyone, on some level, wants to be deeply creative.

Just imagine: Feeling colors like they have their own language. Crying with the singer who knows pain so well, you can trace it in every vibration of her voice. Writing the most thought-provoking poem about the sunrise that pops into your head like it's been waiting there your entire life. Painting a picture that transports someone into it as they gaze.

Creatives know that any and everything is a pool of possibility, and the depths may be limitless with what they can create.

But to be deeply creative is to feel things so deeply that words are not suitable enough silos to hold what lives inside them most of the time.

It all seems so dreamy until you're hit with the other end of it. When days blur, the room is dark, and getting out of bed hurts more than staying in ever could.

The truth is, being this open to the world wears you down.

"44% of creatives have experienced depression at some point, which is 2x more than the general population."

Creative people are often running on overdrive while simultaneously processing more emotionally, neurologically, and intuitively, while catching patterns most people miss.

20% of people have High Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). Their nervous systems are exquisitely attuned, picking up subtleties in detail, emotion, and energy that most wouldn't even notice. Every day stimuli such as loud noises can feel jarring, and a single glance can be too much. Even small decisions can feel monumental. 

For creatives with SPS, inspiration and overwhelm can hit you in the same breath.

And I won't even get started on creative burnout.

The ability to absorb the world, carry its weight, and interpret its meaning is a rare gift, but it demands intentional rest, firm boundaries, and time to process.

Every artist knows that even the smallest touch of white can brighten the darkest point.

The most powerful way to lighten up a personal dark period is to do more creative work, even when it feels like you can't. That is your light point, guidepost, and best way home to yourself.

Heartbreak, Misalignment, and Invisibility

One of the hardest parts of being a creative is the constant push and pull between wanting everything you make to stay completely hidden, just for you, and wanting to be fully seen for exactly who you are, what you represent, and the work you do.

Maybe you try to share it. You post something on Instagram for your tiny following. You tell yourself you don’t care that no one interacts. But deep down, it makes you question if you’re even good enough to do this thing you love, just because it didn’t blow up online.

After that, every cruel word you've ever heard starts ringing in your head. That's a heartbreak that no one can really prepare you for, but it's also a rite of passage.

Being a true creative means making peace with being misunderstood.

Creative visionaries often look remarkably out of place when the rest of the world isn’t ready for the truth they're telling. Leonardo da Vinci wrote in reverse because his mind moved in ways he knew others wouldn't be able to keep up with, or accept.

Real ones stop wasting time chasing applause. They go after what feels real, and let the rest of the world catch up when they’re ready.

That doesn't mean it's not hard, and it doesn't mean that the lack of appreciation doesn't sting.

But one day, you catch a glimpse of all you’ve made. Every piece of yourself you’ve carefully poured time and love into. And you realize:

You are a badass, and the world is better for the things you've created.

The cost is either devastating heartbreak or wicked confidence.

The choice is completely yours.

There's a Seat For Every Ass...

It's hard to keep going when you're not sure if anyone will even like what you're making. The truth is that if you keep at it for long enough, you will find your people- or they'll find you. Somehow. Some way.

Someone out there might be manifesting your exact creation. Maybe it's the thing they're most searching for right now. For all you know, it could become their most prized possession.

That's the tug of creation, I think.

There's the moment in time that you know you're supposed to make something. And a moment when a person who it spiritually belongs to sees it, and recognizes that. 

It's about so much more than putting paint on canvas. The things you make with the right side of your soul are divine intervention. It's an energetic exchange that can ripple across time, echo in memory, and outlive you.

But even divine things come with a price tag.

Right now, someone out there is craving your work. 

And you owe it yourself (and them) to make it. Not for clout, or likes. But because creative work demands to be paid for in presence, time, and honest pieces of you.

Or maybe your art is meant to inspire someone else.

Listening to Aurora's Runaway inspired Billie Eilish to start making music. A pivitol moment of inspiration. Imagine if there was no Aurora. Or no whoever inspired Aurora? And no whoever inspired that person? And so on.

There's a creative lineage calling you, and it's your duty to listen.

But the most important thing when you feel inspired is to make it your own completely. That’s how the right people recognize it as theirs too.

That’s how you find your seat, and how someone else realizes they want a similar seat.

What is Time?

How time passes is always the indicator. A deep connection, deep focus, and deep creation.

Resonate moments distort the fabric of time. They stretch seconds into eternities, collapse hours into flashes, and leave imprints that can make moments immortal.

And then there’s flow. That moment when it all clicks and time disappears? It’s not just magic, it’s your brain slipping into something it loves. A 2024 study on jazz improvisers showed that in flow, your inner critic finally shuts up and your creative autopilot takes over. That shift is measurable and powerful.

Five hours doing the right activity feels like five minutes because your soul is activated, lit up, and completely aligned.

You sit down to make something, and suddenly the day’s gone. Time doesn’t move, it vanishes. Like it made a deal behind your back.

What about the time it takes to hone your craft?

You’ll know you’re in love with it when you skip the party without thinking twice. When painting alone in your living room at midnight feels a million times more electric than being in a room full of people with nothing all that interesting to talk about.

It's not because you have something to prove, but because nothing else compares.

It's time you'll never get back. It’s costly, but the only way to build a skill is by stacking hours no one else sees.

Creating With Excitement

I’m not sure what the point of creating without excitement is.

Creation lives in the sacral chakra, which is the same energy center that holds your desire, your emotions, and your sexuality.

It’s no coincidence it sits in the exact place a baby is made, which of course, is ultimate creation.

Sex and art live together in your second chakra.

They both demand openness. They both ask you to feel something. They both require you to show up vulnerable, in the most honest possible version of yourself.

They bypass logic and tap straight into the pulse beneath the surface.

The best art gets under your skin. It shifts something in you. It makes you feel awake, stirred up, and hungry for more.
Just like the best sex.

And that kind of raw, full-body excitement, doesn’t come cheap.

It asks for your full presence. It asks you to risk being fully seen, and to make something that might not be received the way you hoped.

It's my blog, and I'll quote Bashar if I want to:

“Follow your highest excitement, with integrity, to the best of your ability, with zero insistence on the outcome.” -Bashar

“Excitement is the thread; follow it, and it will lead you to everything you need.” -Bashar

“Excitement is your true vibration. It’s your body’s translation of the frequency of your True Core Being. That’s why our biggest teaching is: ‘Follow your highest excitement in life.’ Because that means when you act on it, you’re in alignment with yourself. It’s the compass needle pointing to your magnetic north.” -Bashar

If you’re not at least a little lit up by what you’re making, you need a different hobby, babe.

Creation without Destruction

They say you don’t have to destroy yourself to make great art, but most of the time, you have to destroy something.

A version of yourself you’ve outgrown. A belief that has kept you small or stuck. A pattern that used to protect you but now hurts you just as bad.

True creation demands a sacrifice to: break your own rules, shatter old stories, be okay with being misunderstood, and give up the comfort of invisibility.

Hidden in that wreckage, something honest begins to show itself. Because the ultimate cost of creation is destruction. Not of your spirit, but of everything that's BS.

When you’re willing to lose the fake parts of you, you make space for what’s been screaming to exist. If you do it properly, real creation takes a piece of you with it, and you'll never get it back.

But in its place, you get something so much more honest. Something that couldn’t exist before. And that’s the entire point.

The ultimate cost of creation is destruction.

If you’re not willing to pay, you don't get to transform.

What Creation Costs You

At the end of it all, you have something that only you could’ve made, from a story only you can tell.

Your finished product shows a snapshot in time of exactly who you were when you made it.

The story is almost always one with resilience, grit, effort, and more than anything, it’s proof that you were here and alive.

The cost may be your time. Your center. Your energy. Your youth. Your attention. Your fire.

But it's worth all of it every single time. Because things made in your most excited, lit-up, full-bodied self are perfect.

Anything made from love, soul, or the hidden parts of yourself is sacred, unreplicable, and unequivocally priceless.

Looking for ways to wake up your most creative self? Earth Siren: Solstice is a 90-Day Chakra Workbook designed to bring you home to yourself, awaken your creative energy, and restore every light point gone dim.