Heaven must be a sunny apartment in Southern California, a homemade cold-press latte to sip at 10am, paint supplies, and a whole day to follow one’s muse.

My mantra for stepping back into the creative flow is UNDERTHINK IT. Everything is a mess. Nothing is routine. I have no idea what I am doing, posting reels to Instagram and shorts to YouTube and building this website. I embrace the archetype of the fool.

Something about discovering and watching the painter Ellie Harold the other night before sleep lit a fire under my proverbial ass, and I woke up with a creative verve that has not visited me in months.

So yesterday, exactly a month since I walked out of my final class as a masters student, I started painting again.

I spent that month recovering. My body crashed almost exactly as the masters program ended, buckling under the pressure of everything going on. It was a pretty bad respiratory infection that kept me horizontal and sorry for myself for longer than I wish to detail.

I’ve been watching reruns of One Tree Hill and stressing about money and eating junk and despairing over my perceived soul depletion and fearing the unknown. When will I earn my next paycheck? Where will I work? Will it take until retirement to pay back my student loans?

As an act of rebellion, I am saying “fuck it” and just standing in front of that easel, listening to good tunes, and trying to feel the sacred movement of the clock as something more than a measure of economics.