In college while studying critical theory and creativity in literature, I learned about systems like capitalism, patriarchy, and colonization, which gave me a vocabulary to talk about the ways I felt my education and upbringing had made me feel divided within myself. Despite taking many creative writing classes and reading and learning and practicing all I could on my own, my creative expression always felt shaky and easily blocked. It was only by unpacking how those systems that damage so many of us had been internalized and become so pervasive in school and in the workplace—meanwhile learning about the practices of actual artists and writers rather than those prescribed by critics and educators—that I could start retraining myself in how to be creative.

Capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the sites of education and workplaces where these systems get internalized and replicated in many little ways are always telling you that you need something else. You’re not enough as you are, you don’t have what it takes yet, you need to work harder and do more, and guess what, you’re already behind. These messages are especially damaging to people of color, women, queer/trans folx, other marginalized groups who aren’t given much privilige or resources to start with and are expected to perform at the same level and not complain about the injustice of that. Which affects our creative work too!

I realized that if I wanted to be a writer like I’d always wanted, I would need to get to the deeper roots of creativity and unlearn a lot of what I had internalized that was keeping me stuck. Since 2011, I’ve been gathering research and creative exercises from different disciplines and contexts. I’ve researched ideas in design thinking, improv, astrology, psychology, Buddhist/Indian thought, and theory and literature by people of color and queer writers as well as prolific mainstream writers. Through these ideas, I’ve been learning to recover my creativity and found many of the reasons why we get blocked and different ways of understanding them.

After pursuing my Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at UCLA, where I studied interdisciplinary creativity and taught expository writing, I worked in museum communications, publishing, and user experience design—all of these experiences have helped me understand creativity from different perspectives and using different tools.

I’ve learned that the most radical form of creativity comes from accepting the fullness of your being in the world. There are practices and ideas that can lead to more creatively rich experience right now, if we can just slow down and pay attention differently. That doesn’t mean it’s easy and doesn’t require careful effort and guidance—but it does mean that we have more than we think we have, even if we don’t have a lot. We just have to make space and tap into our wild imaginations.

For me, creative practice is freedom. It restores energy and passion, not the other way around. It’s a place to reclaim your many selves and see yourself not just as an agent in your life, but also as a collaborator with life. As a “guide from the side”, my mission is to help us recover our sense of imagination and spontaneity, discovering new ways to relate to creative work outside of our cultural conditioning.