You Are a Worthy Person

I want to talk about something that lives beneath almost every creative block I've ever encountered in myself and in the people who share their creative struggles with me.

It's a belief, usually unexamined, usually inherited from somewhere so long ago that its origin has been forgotten. It goes something like this: I have to earn the right to take up creative space.

I have to be good enough. Experienced enough. Productive enough with the rest of my time. Selfless enough in all the other areas of my life. And only then — after all of that, and assuming there's any time and energy left — I might be allowed to sit at the craft table and make something beautiful for no reason except that I wanted to.

I want to gently and firmly dismantle this belief. Because it is not true, and it is costing you things you don't have to give up.

Where the Unworthiness Comes From

Most of us absorbed messages in childhood — from our families, our cultures, our schools, sometimes from specific people who said specific things at specific moments — about the value of creative work. About whether making beautiful things for the pleasure of it was a legitimate use of time. About whether our particular aesthetic sensibilities deserved to be honored.

Some of us were lucky. Someone in our early lives saw us creating and said: yes, that. Do more of that. That matters.

Others of us received different messages. That art was impractical. That making pretty things was indulgent. That there was real work to be done and creative play was something children did, not adults. That the standards were too high for someone like us to meet, so why bother.

We grew up and we carried those messages with us, folded small, often out of sight. And now we sit at the craft table and feel vaguely guilty about it. Or we don't sit at the craft table at all, because the guilt outweighs the desire before we ever get there.

The Wholeness of Wanting

Here is what I want you to hear, in whatever way lands most usefully for you:

Wanting to make beautiful things is not a character flaw. It is not selfishness. It is not frivolity. It is not something that requires justification or apology or permission from anyone.

The desire to create — to make something that wasn't there before, to express something through your hands and your eyes and your aesthetic sensibility — is one of the most deeply human impulses there is. It has been with us for as long as we have evidence of human beings doing anything at all. We made marks on cave walls before we built cities. We decorated tools before we had philosophy.

The making is not the decoration on the surface of a life. It is part of the substance of it.

You were not born needing to earn the right to this. You arrived with it. Whatever happened in between was interference, not correction.

On Not Stepping on Anyone's Toes

I want to address something in how you framed this idea when we were talking about it, because it captures something important.

You want to do what you want — as long as you're not stepping on someone else's toes.

This is generous and wise and also, I think, already well within your grasp. Because most of us who struggle with creative worthiness are not, actually, in danger of stepping on anyone's toes. We are in danger of the opposite — of shrinking so far back from our own desires that we're not taking up the space that's rightfully ours at all.

The person taking up too much space rarely worries about whether they're taking up too much space. The worry itself is almost always evidence that you're being thoughtful, careful, genuinely considerate of others.

You are allowed to want what you want. You are allowed to pursue it, to spend time on it, to invest in it, to take it seriously. You are allowed to be the person for whom making beautiful things is a real and important part of what it means to be alive.

None of that requires anyone else's diminishment. The creative space is not a finite resource. Your joy in making does not take anything from anyone.

The Worthy Maker

Here is the truth, as plainly as I can say it:

You don't have to be a professional artist. You don't have to have natural talent. You don't have to produce things that other people admire. You don't have to justify the time you spend. You don't have to have finished everything on the list before you're allowed to sit down and play.

You just have to be a person who wants to make something. And you already are.

That is the whole qualification. That is the only credential required.

The table is set. The supplies are waiting. The hour is yours if you choose to claim it.

You are a worthy person. Come and make something beautiful.

— Sandy 🦋

Star Phoenix Studio is here for every maker, at every level, in every season of creative life. Browse the collections at starphoenixstudio.com — and make something today that's entirely and joyfully yours.

Share this with every creative person in your life who needs to hear it.