Latest / Starting Over: Stories of Reinvention, Hope & Second Chances / Why Your Secret Creative Project Is The bravest Thing You’ll Do All Year | Starting Over
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of freedom that only arrives when you create something no one will ever see. It’s not about being shy; it’s about remembering what joy feels like before the world starts asking for receipts. Let’s get real for a second. We live in an era where if you make something, you feel this immediate, electric urge to show it. To post it. To tag it. To measure its worth by the number of hearts it gathers or the comments it sparks. I used to be exactly like that. I remember sitting at my desk after leaving that corporate job, hands shaking, typing up my first blog post with the intention of sharing it with every person I’d ever met. I wanted validation. I wanted proof that I hadn’t just thrown away a safe career for a dream. But here’s the thing about seeking external validation for your creative soul: it turns your joy into a performance. And performances are exhausting. They require you to keep the mask on, even when you’re crying behind the scenes. When you create for an audience, you start editing yourself before you’ve even finished the thought. You ask, 'Will they like this?' instead of 'Do I love this?' And slowly, the magic drains out of the work because the work was never really yours anymore. It belonged to the imaginary critic in the back of everyone’s mind. So, imagine a different space. A room where the door is locked. Not from the outside, but from the inside. This is the sanctuary of the private project. Maybe it’s a journal you hide under your mattress. Maybe it’s a playlist you never share on social media. Maybe it’s watercolor paintings you frame and put in the closet because they’re too imperfect for the living room wall. There is profound courage in choosing privacy over visibility. It takes guts to say, 'This is mine. It doesn’t need to prove anything.' When I started painting again last year, I didn’t tell a soul. I bought cheap canvases and messy brushes. I painted terrible landscapes that looked more like mud splashes than mountains. And guess what? I loved every minute of it. Because there was no one to judge the perspective. No one to critique the color theory. No one to compare my muddy mountain to someone else’s polished peak. In that private space, I wasn’t competing. I wasn’t performing. I was just existing. I was reconnecting with the part of me that creates because creating makes me feel alive, not because it makes me feel famous. We have to talk about why we struggle with this. Why do we feel guilty for keeping things private? Why does hiding our art feel like lying to the world? I think it’s because we’ve been conditioned to believe that value equals visibility. If people don’t know you’re doing it, did you really do it? That’s a lie. A dangerous, productivity-obsessed lie. I had a friend once who wrote poetry. She wrote these beautiful, raw verses about grief and love and the quiet moments between heartbeats. For years, she posted them online, chasing likes, trying to find her tribe. But then she hit a rough patch. Life got heavy. Her feed felt performative. So, she stopped posting. She kept writing, but she only showed her sister. She said it was the most liberating month of her life. She said her words came back sharper, truer, deeper. She wasn’t writing for the algorithm anymore; she was writing for her own survival. That’s the pivot point. When you remove the audience, you don’t lose your voice. You find it. You stop shouting into the void and start whispering truths that matter to you. And let’s be honest, creative work is messy. It’s awkward. It’s full of false starts and abandoned ideas and ugly drafts. When you create publicly, you often try to skip the mess. You want to show the final product, the polished result. But the growth happens in the mess. It happens in the hours where you’re making mistakes nobody sees. When you keep a project private, you give yourself permission to fail without an audience watching. You can burn the canvas. You can delete the file. You can write three bad chapters and throw them in the trash. No one is disappointed in you. No one is waiting for you to deliver. This freedom allows you to take risks you wouldn’t take otherwise. You might try a new style you’re bad at. You might explore a theme that scares you. You might create something weird and wonderful that would never go viral but means everything to you. I started a secret recipe book during lockdown. Just notes on how to cook things I liked. Some were disasters. Some were gold. Nobody saw it but me. But reading through it now, it’s not just a collection of recipes. It’s a map of my comfort. It’s a record of how I fed myself when the world felt unsafe. That intimacy is priceless. There’s also a childlike playfulness that returns when you create in private. Remember when you were six and you drew a picture just to tape it on the fridge, not because anyone asked for it, but because you wanted to see it? That feeling. We lose it as we age. We become serious. We become strategic. We become managers of our own brands. But creativity isn’t management. Creativity is play. And play requires safety. It requires a space where you aren’t being graded. When I encourage listeners to start a private creative practice, I’m not asking them to hide. I’m asking them to protect their spark. Think of your creativity like a houseplant. If you leave it out in the harsh sun all day, staring at passersby, it wilts. It tries to look perfect for the neighborhood. But if you bring it inside, give it some shade, tend to it quietly, it grows stronger roots. It blooms harder. The beauty of a private project is that it recharges you. It becomes your battery. On days when the public world is loud, draining, and demanding, you can retreat to your private creation. You can open that journal, or pick up those brushes, or strum those guitar chords, and remember who you are when you’re not performing. You remember that you are enough, simply because you exist, not because you produced something marketable. So, here is my challenge to you. This week, I want you to start something. Anything. A sketch. A poem. A song. A garden bed. A list of dreams. And I want you to promise me one thing: do not share it. Do not post it. Do not tell five friends about it until it’s done. Keep it in the dark for a while. Let it grow in the shadows. See how it changes when it has no witnesses. Notice how your body feels when you create without expectation. Notice the lightness in your chest. Notice the silence in your head. This isn’t about giving up on sharing your gifts forever. It’s about reclaiming the right to enjoy them first. It’s about falling in love with the process again, so that when you do decide to share, you’re sharing from a place of abundance, not a place of need. You’re sharing because you’re overflowing, not because you’re empty and hoping someone fills the cup. That shift changes everything. It turns creation from a chore into a gift you give yourself. And that is the most radical act of self-care there is. Welcome back to the beautiful chaos, but this time, let’s make it beautifully, fiercely, privately yours. Thank you for letting me into your space today. Be gentle with yourself. Create something useless and wonderful. I’ll see you in the next one. Bye for now.