Embracing Creativity: Starting a Blog in 2025

Since watching "The Princess Diaries" in 2001, I romanticized the idea of documenting my innermost thoughts. I bought my first "real" journal on a family vacation to Italy in 2004. It was a red leather-bound notebook with gold hearts and a tie to maintain the privacy of my writing. I recorded my entire vacation in that journal and continued documenting every moment afterward.

My love of writing continued to develop. English remained my favorite subject in school; I relished the opportunity to create with a short story prompt or an essay. All the while, I continued to journal. Some seasons were more consistent than others, but there was always a blank notebook waiting for the moment I was ready to pour my soul into its pages once again.

Over the years, one of my biggest fears has been sharing my authentic creativity. This block has transcended everything from my love of sketching to painting and writing. I consistently convince myself that I don't have anything important enough to say. My words, my art, they are all saturated in a world full of people who are significantly more impactful than I am, more eloquent than I am, and who have earned a louder voice than I have. Starting this blog is my defiance against those ideas.

I am here to show up, to learn, and to challenge myself to just get started. I am ready to show myself that things don't need to be perfect, and I am allowed to develop as I go. I am doing this for me. I am exercising against every instinct in my mind that insists this is a dumb idea, to prove to myself that I am worthy of sharing. My creativity does not need to be locked behind a hardcover or stored away in loose pieces of paper that no one will ever see. There is plenty of value in that, but I am ready to push myself a little further and allow evolution to happen through sharing.