How Creativity Saved Me
I’ve been pretty quiet since publishing my last piece, When Your Startup Fails, which brought quite a bit of unexpected attention onto my story. Here’s a bit about my recovery, and how it inspired my new project: WritePlayDraw.com.
A Dark Place
January of 2019 was a bad month: I shut down the startup I’d poured myself into for three years, broke up with my long term girlfriend (a mutual breakup caused in part by my work stress), and because of my job loss, had to withdraw from a contract to buy my dream condo in Brooklyn, forfeiting a chunk of my deposit in the process. At 31, the life and future I’d envisioned seemed gone. I was lost.
I’d fused my identity with my identity as a founder. When my startup failed, I felt like I’d failed, a feeling compounded by the loss of my relationship and would-be home. I crawled into an emotional and psychological cave. I knew if I wanted to climb back out, I had to rebuild my sense of self. To do that, I put my career on hold and signed up for a number of creative classes — improv, woodworking, and creative nonfiction writing. In that writing course, I found my path.
Our writing workshop met once a week for two hours. The class was comprised of eight “non-creative” professionals. We worked in tech, law, finance and other fields, but none of us considered ourselves to be writers — just people with an itch to put pen to paper. At the start of each class, the teacher would read a short prompt. and we’d all spend 10–15 minutes writing our response. The prompts were specific enough to kick start our writing, but open-ended enough to allow a huge degree of freedom. Write about a memorable vacation from your childhood. Write about a person from your past. Invent a sport. The time constraint made it impossible to overthink the subject and forced you to put pen to paper right away. The collective nature of the experience, and the possibility of sharing with the group, made the process that much more exciting.
A Creative Recovery
The class ended, and I wanted to keep writing, but I knew I’d need a system to stay on track. I formed a writing group with a few of my classmates with a simple structure: each day, one of us would email a prompt to the group. You couldn’t open the email until you were ready to commit 15 minutes to distraction-free writing — Airplane Mode highly recommended. I’d do the writing, read the other pieces, occasionally send out thoughts or feedback, and move on, feeling refreshed.
It’s not as if I hadn’t done anything creative in the past ten years — but on reflection, any creativity in my work or life always seems to have been in service of some other goal. Devoting myself to true creative expression in which the goal is the activity itself — even for just a few minutes a day — has been incredibly rejuvenating. Beyond the writing, I’ve become more productive and creative in other areas of my life, and generally feel better and more fulfilled than I have in years. Through this, I’ve come to a major realization:
Creative expression is an incredibly powerful and under-appreciated source of wellness.
I wonder if I could have avoided that dark place altogether had I regularly devoted time to creative expression during my startup journey. I even wonder if my startup would have had a better outcome.
The Creativity Inside Us All
Recently, I’ve been asking everyone I know about their creative hobbies. Two answers always come up, often accompanied by a look of regret:
- “I used to [write/draw/play guitar/etc.], but I just don’t make time for it anymore.”
- “I really don’t have any creative hobbies — I’ve always wanted to try [writing/drawing/playing guitar/etc.], but I’ve been too intimidated to start.”
Through these conversations, I’ve become convinced that each of us has a well of creativity, many of us just need help tapping into it.
In the past few months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching the existing tools and platforms available to writers, artists and musicians. To be sure, there’s no shortage of them. What’s missing, though, is a platform to help people like me — those who’d hesitate to identify as writers, artists or musicians — realize the creativity they may not even know they have.
A Platform To Channel Creative Expression for Wellness’ Sake
I’ve decided to explore the idea of building this platform myself. I’ve thought a lot about what kept me from writing over the years despite the fact that the desire was there, though buried. Here’s what I’ve come up with:
- I was lacking a discrete creative spark to turn my desire into action — each time I’d tried writing since college, I ended up staring at a blank page until I’d lost the will to write.
- I had no system of accountability and validation — unfortunately, writing for the sake of writing wasn’t enough to get me started, I needed an additional incentive.
- I couldn’t find a low-stakes entry point into writing — signing up for a writing class was a significant time and financial commitment. Even journaling felt like a big ask; I wanted to write, yes, but not about my feelings — if anything, I was looking for an escape.
The writing prompt experience seemed to check all of these boxes. The prompt served as the creative spark. The sharing served as the accountability and validation. And the distinct 15-minute time limit — with no expectation of creating a masterpiece — was the low-stakes entry point I needed to establish and maintain a creative practice.
In designing a platform that incorporates these traits, my goal is to emulate the experience that brought my own creativity to life.
I’m envisioning a social platform that encourages people to make time for creative expression through a daily, simple prompt for writing, art or music.
Think Calm for creative expression — a push notification, followed by fifteen minutes of pure creativity; you’re doing it because it’s good for you. For some, the creative burst itself will be enough. For others, there will be an opportunity to share their work with a supportive community of people engaged in the same “conversation.”
To test out this idea, I’ve launched WritePlayDraw.com — a simple, email-based community and platform. In the past week, I’ve sent three writing prompts, and shared dozens of submissions with the community. Alongside the submissions, I’ve gotten amazing feedback from the members about the experience. From a Proctor & Gamble Brand Director: “I loved writing it, went in with a no looking back kind of flow. Felt like dancing with my eyes shut.” From a freelance graphic designer: “Love this reconnection to making things for myself. I’ll be sure to keep writing.” Soon, I’ll begin sending out prompts for art and music as well.
To be clear, this is a passion project at the moment, and I’m not yet certain that there’s a business here — that remains to be seen. Fifteen minutes for creative expression is not a small ask of people, particularly for those who don’t consider themselves to be naturally creative. I do have a vision for how this grows, though, and it follows a similar path to that of a previous new frontier of the wellness movement — meditation. Seven or eight years ago, meditation was considered to be a cultish pursuit that was largely inaccessible to the masses. But thanks to apps like Headspace and Calm, today, meditation is widespread, its numerous benefits well-known.
What’s Next For Me
I’m excited about this new platform I’m building, but I’m still working on developing my own practice of creative expression. I’m currently reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which has a great 12–week program for clearing “creative blocks” in an attempt to find your inner artist and become a happier, more productive person. In July, I’ll be spending a week at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in order to immerse myself in creative energy. And all of this, of course, is part of a larger regimen of rebuilding my own wellbeing which includes exercise, therapy, surrounding myself with friends and family, and more.
In my piece about the failure of my last startup, I wrote that in my next entrepreneurial journey, I’d need to build something that I felt truly passionate about. Ironically, it was writing this piece (and others) that led me to this realization about the value of creative expression, and my own excitement for it. I don’t know where this will go, nor do I know what the next few months of my own life will look like — but for now, every day that I spend spreading the word about this is a day where I find meaning.
Please sign up at WritePlayDraw.com to join the beta community! And don’t hesitate to get in touch: @thewordsof_jdn / jasper.nathaniel@gmail.com.
