Do Something that Makes You Feel Alive

You don't have to be good at it. It doesn't have to be productive. It just has to belong to you.

I love to paint.

Several years ago, I discovered how much I enjoyed making art. I bought supplies, started experimenting with different materials, and painted regularly enough that I was beginning to develop some actual skill. I loved having something creative that was mine.

And then life got busy.

Painting became one of those things I was definitely going to get back to. The supplies went into a box, and somehow several months passed.

I don't remember deciding to stop painting. I think that's how we lose a lot of the things we love as adults. We don't consciously decide they don't matter anymore. Other things just start mattering more urgently. Work, kids, appointments, relationships, dinner, laundry, and the endless administrative work of being a person slowly take over the available space.

The things that aren't necessary get pushed to the edges.

Unfortunately, sometimes the things that aren't necessary are also the things that make us feel most like ourselves.

When your world gets smaller

By the time a friend reminded me about painting, I was in a very different season of my life.

I was struggling with burnout and chronic health issues. I was living with chronic pain, my energy was incredibly low, and some days getting out of bed was difficult.

My world had gotten very small.

I couldn't simply decide I needed to get out more, make plans with friends, take a class, or go do something fun. A lot of the things we normally suggest when someone isn't feeling like herself weren't really available to me. I was spending more and more time at home, and the combination of pain, exhaustion, and isolation was taking a toll. I was becoming depressed.

Then a friend reminded me of something I had almost forgotten: I used to love painting.

She encouraged me to start again.

I was not enthusiastic.

When you're depleted, even things you enjoy can feel like work. Pulling out the supplies felt like a task. Deciding what to paint felt like a task. Sitting upright long enough to actually do it could feel like a task.

But I also knew something needed to change. Going out into the world wasn't much of an option for me at that point, so reluctantly, I pulled my art supplies out of the box.

It was bad

There was no beautiful cinematic moment where I picked up a paintbrush, creativity came rushing back, and I suddenly remembered who I was.

I was rusty. Really rusty.

Some of those first paintings were just...not good. And it was activating my perfectionist part. Thankfully, I have incredibly supportive friends and family who endured this period with me. I would show them something I'd made and they would find something encouraging to say about it. Looking back, I'm pretty sure some of those compliments required more creativity than the paintings themselves.

But they kept encouraging me, so I kept painting.

There were tears. Mostly mine. Because it wasn't really just about the paintings.

At that point in my life, I was already struggling with the fact that I couldn't perform in all the ways I used to. I couldn't accomplish as much. I couldn't simply push through when I was tired or hurting. My body had imposed limits on me that I hadn't chosen, and I carried a surprising amount of shame about what I could no longer do.

For someone who had spent much of her life being capable, productive, and independent, losing access to those parts of myself was painful.

And now I was doing something I used to be pretty good at, and I wasn't particularly good at that anymore either.

I wanted the old skill back immediately. I wanted evidence that I was still me. Instead, I got wonky flowers and paintings that looked much better in my head than they did on paper.

It turns out there is something humbling about being bad at something you love.

We are so uncomfortable being bad at things

I think this is especially hard for people who are accustomed to being competent.

As adults, we tend to gravitate toward things we're already good at. Competence feels comfortable. We know what we're doing, we get results, and occasionally someone tells us we're impressive. Winning!

Being a beginner offers none of those assurances.

When you're doing something simply because you enjoy it, you have to confront a question most of us don't ask very often: What if I'm never particularly good at this?

What if nobody is impressed? What if I never make money from it? What if I don't post it anywhere? What if there is absolutely no measurable return on the hours I spend doing it?

Was the time or the money still worth spending?

I think we've become so accustomed to evaluating our lives through productivity that even our hobbies aren't safe from it. We exercise and track the results. We read and count the books. We create something and immediately wonder whether we could sell it. We cook and photograph it. We turn the things we love into things we can measure, improve, monetize, or perform.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with that. I am guilty of this, too.

But I also think we need parts of our lives that are allowed to exist simply because we like who we are while we're doing them.

Painting became that for me.

Joy doesn't have to justify itself

When you're burned out, joy can feel strangely irresponsible. There are always more useful things you could be doing, especially if you're someone who is accustomed to measuring a good day by how much you accomplished.

Eventually, though, I realized I didn't need painting because I needed to become a better artist. I needed painting because I needed something in my life that wasn't about managing a problem.

For a little while, I could think about color and shape and texture instead of symptoms and responsibilities. I could decide whether I liked something simply because I liked it. I could experiment, make a mess, hate what I made, paint over it, and try again.

At a time when so much of my attention was focused on what my body couldn't do, art gave me somewhere to experience what I still could.

Slowly, I started feeling more like myself again.

Not necessarily the version of myself I had been before. I don't think we always go backward like that. Sometimes difficult seasons change us.

But there were pieces of me coming back online: curiosity, creativity, playfulness, even the willingness to make something ugly and laugh about it.

I hadn't realized how much I'd missed them.

I'm still painting

Years later, I still paint.

My skills came back, and I've continued building on them by experimenting with new techniques and materials. I've made things I'm genuinely proud of and plenty of things that will never see the light of day.

Every once in a while I still finish something, stare at it for a minute, and think, Well. That was unfortunate.

But I keep painting because it brings me joy.

That is enough of a reason.

Recently, I've started working on a set of affirmation cards using my own artwork. The words on them are things I needed to hear during that period of my life—reminders about rest, worth, agency, and what it means to make room for yourself again.

One of them says:

Do what makes you feel alive.

Another says:

You don't have to be useful to be loved.

At the time, those were lessons I desperately needed to learn. Now they're becoming something I get to create and share with other women.

There's something beautifully full-circle about that.

What makes you feel alive?

Most of us spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what needs our attention. What needs to get done? Who needs something from me? What am I behind on? What problem needs to be solved next?

Maybe we need another question in the rotation:

What makes me feel alive?

Not what are you best at. Not what could become a business. Not what will make you healthier, more accomplished, more interesting, or more impressive.

What do you enjoy simply because you enjoy it?

What did you used to do before life got so busy? What are you curious about? What have you convinced yourself you're too old, too busy, too tired, or not talented enough to try?

What disappeared somewhere underneath work and parenting and relationships and responsibility?

Maybe it's painting. Maybe it's dancing, gardening, writing, playing music, reading novels in the middle of the afternoon, making something with your hands, or learning something you're embarrassingly bad at.

You don't need to turn it into a major life transformation. You don't need to “find your passion.” You certainly don't need to monetize it.

Sometimes reconnecting with yourself is much less dramatic than that.

Sometimes you just pull a dusty box out of the closet, open it, and begin again—even if you're rusty, even if you're tired, and even if the first thing you make is objectively terrible.

Because not everything you do needs to prove something about you.

Some things can simply remind you that you're still here.