Latest / Starting Over: Stories of Reinvention, Hope & Second Chances / The Quiet Joy of Creating for No One: Why Your Secret Project Matters | Starting Over
Transcript
- You know that little voice in the back of your head that whispers, 'What if I just made this for me?' Stop. Do not scroll past it. That whisper is the most important conversation you will have all week. Let’s get real for a second. We live in an era where everything we create is on trial. You write a caption, and suddenly you’re calculating the algorithm. You bake a loaf of sourdough, and you’re already thinking about the lighting for the Instagram story. You paint a watercolor, and your first instinct isn’t to feel the brushstroke, but to wonder if it looks professional enough to tag. We have trained ourselves to believe that creativity is only valuable if it is seen, shared, and validated by strangers. But here is the ache I want us to sit with today: what happens when we strip away the audience? What happens when we take the spotlight off the stage and turn it inward? I think about my own journey out of corporate burnout. For years, I treated my writing like a performance. Every email, every report, every creative pitch was designed to be impressive. It was exhausting. It left me hollow. I wasn’t creating; I was performing. And I realized I had forgotten how to play. I had forgotten the simple, electric joy of making something because it felt good in my hands, not because it might go viral. Today, I want to invite you into a different kind of space. A space where the only metric that matters is your own heartbeat. There is a specific kind of freedom that comes from keeping your creation private. It sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? We are social creatures. We crave connection. So why would privacy feel like liberation? Because privacy removes the pressure of expectation. When you create for an audience, you start to shape your work to fit their preferences. You soften your edges. You dilute your weirdness to make it palatable. You become a curator of yourself rather than a creator of truth. But when you create purely for private joy, you reclaim your weirdness. You allow yourself to be messy, unpolished, and entirely authentic. Think about the last time you hummed a tune in the shower. You didn’t worry about your pitch being perfect. You didn’t check if anyone was listening. You just let the sound come out because it felt right in your chest. That is private joy. It is raw. It is unfiltered. It is yours. And it is incredibly rare in our hyper-connected world. To give yourself permission to create without sharing is to say, 'My experience of this moment is enough.' It is a radical act of self-trust. It says that your inner world is rich enough to sustain you, even if no one else ever sees the evidence of it. I remember a few years ago, I bought a cheap set of oil paints. Not expensive ones. Just the kind you find at a craft store, the ones that smell like turpentine and possibility. I didn’t plan to sell them. I didn’t plan to frame them. I just wanted to see what blue looked like when I mixed it with a little bit of yellow and a lot of hesitation. I spent an entire Saturday afternoon staring at a canvas, mixing colors, smudging them with my fingers, ruining them, starting over. There was no goal. There was no deadline. There was only the sensation of pigment on skin and the quiet hum of focus. At the end of the day, I looked at that painting. It was terrible. It was abstract in a way that said 'I don’t know what I’m doing' rather than 'I am an avant-garde artist.' But I loved it. I loved it because it was mine. It held no other person’s expectations. It held only my curiosity. That painting sits in my closet still. No one has seen it. And I think about it often as a reminder that the process was the prize. The joy wasn’t in the outcome; it was in the surrender. When we create for private joy, we reconnect with that sense of play. We remember that we are not machines designed for output. We are humans designed for exploration. And exploration requires the safety to fail, to wander, and to be beautifully, gloriously imperfect. We need to talk about the myth of the masterpiece. How many times have you put down your pen, your brush, or your knitting needles because the result didn’t match the vision in your head? We hold ourselves to such impossibly high standards. We think that if it isn’t beautiful, it isn’t worth doing. But private joy doesn’t care about beauty. Private joy cares about expression. It cares about the release of energy. When you create for yourself, you give yourself permission to make 'bad' art. You give yourself permission to write a poem that makes no sense. You give yourself permission to sing off-key. This is where the magic happens. This is where you break through the perfectionism that has been holding you hostage. Perfectionism is just fear wearing a tuxedo. It wants to keep you safe, but it keeps you small. Private joy invites you to take off the tuxedo. It invites you to dance in your living room even if you step on your partner’s toes. It invites you to build a clay pot that wobbles. These moments of imperfection are not failures. They are acts of rebellion against a culture that demands constant polish. They are proof that you are alive, that you are feeling, and that you are capable of generating something from nothing. And that generation is a superpower. So how do we bring this into our lives? It starts with a tiny commitment. Pick one thing. Just one. It could be journaling three pages every morning that no one will ever read. It could be cooking a new recipe and eating it alone at the table, savoring every bite without taking a photo. It could be sketching the tree outside your window. The key is intention. You must intend for it to be private. Delete the draft after you write it. Throw the clay into the bin. Put the sketchbook on the highest shelf. Make it sacred ground. This practice is not about productivity. It is about presence. It is about showing up for yourself in a way that requires no external validation. In a previous episode, we talked about the exhaustion of saying yes to everyone else. We discussed how people-pleasing drains our energy reserves until we have nothing left for ourselves. This creative practice is the antidote. It is a way of saying yes to you. It fills the cup. It reminds you that you are not just a provider of value to others. You are a creator of value for yourself. And that distinction changes everything. When you nurture your own creative spirit in secret, you carry a different energy into the world. You become lighter. You become more patient. You become more generous. Because you are no longer looking for scraps of validation from the outside. You are bringing your own feast to the table. I know what you might be thinking. 'But Sacha, if I don’t share it, does it matter?' Yes. It matters. Because when you create for private joy, you heal a part of yourself that has been neglected. You reconnect with your intuition. You strengthen your resilience. And those changes ripple out into every other area of your life. You become less reactive. More grounded. More truly present with the people you love. You stop seeking approval because you have found approval within. This is not selfish. This is essential. Think of it like oxygen masks on a plane. You cannot help others if you are suffocating. By giving yourself the gift of private creation, you are filling your own tank. And then, strangely enough, when you do choose to share your work later, it will be different. It will be lighter. It will be freer. Because it won’t be born out of a need to prove yourself. It will be born out of abundance. It will be a gift, not a plea. So let that sink in. Let your creations be gifts. Let them be wild and untamed and entirely yours. You do not owe the world your labor. You owe yourself your joy. And that joy is a fierce, radiant thing that needs no witness to be real. Thank you for letting me into your quiet moments. Keep creating. Keep playing. And remember, the best audience is always you. Until next time, stay beautifully chaotic.