If you have a Pinterest account, you’ve probably stumbled across photo-worthy journal spreads covered in washi tape, stickers, and photobooth strips that make you want to dig out an old journal and make it your new thing. Or maybe, you find prompts that make you want to dig up an old composition notebook to dump all of your thoughts into.Â
Either way, buying a journal and expressing yourself creatively, in whatever capacity that means to you, is a crucial way to navigate and make sense of your life.Â
Actor Ethan Hawke did a TED Talk called “Give Yourself Permission to be Creative” that I think encapsulates why it’s important to give yourself a creative outlet and interact with art on a regular basis.Â
He essentially says that people don’t always pay mind to certain art forms until certain things happen to them. “And all of a sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life,” he says. “And has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?”Â
In these situations, when it feels like you’re the first person to experience love, or pain, or anxiety, you can turn to creative expression and find company, even if it remains intrapersonal.Â
“And that’s when art’s not a luxury. It’s actually sustenance. We need it… Human creativity is nature manifest in us,” Hawke says.
Creativity exists in everybody, whether everyone would dub themselves creative minded or not. It’s diverse in its presentation amongst people — showing up as things like artistic skills, social skills, and organizational skills. Even if this isn’t what comes to mind when hearing the word “creative,” these skills manifest differently in all people. How you choose to navigate specific tasks takes creativity, even if the task isn’t an art project.
Even if it doesn’t seem like it, doing a page in your journal about your current favorite songs is a way for you to express yourself and make sense of the world around you. You’re using the music to craft a narrative about that point in your life, putting to paper a physical documentation of what music is speaking to you at that distinct point in your life.Â
Doing pages where you spill your guts helps you navigate your life, relationships, responsibilities, dreams, goals. Even if nobody ever reads it, it’s a conversation with yourself where you work through things and become an evolved version of yourself.Â
Honestly, just doing something analog every once in a while is good for you in every capacity. It’s a screentime break, and exercise in motor skills, creativity, and emotional processing.Â
So, in the words of Ethan Hawke, “If you want to help your community, if you want to help your family, if you want to help your friends, you have to express yourself and to express yourself, you have to know yourself.”Â