I watched a TikTok yesterday that absolutely gagged me.
This creator spoke to my soul when she straight up told me that not having a creative outlet makes me INSANE.
When @witti.indi so elegantly said…
“Creative people without a creative outlet are insufferable.”
“You’re not sad, you just need to create.”
“Unused creative energy attaches itself to the wrong things — like people, feelings, anxiety…”
And I sat there like… ouch? I think? I felt both called out, yet completely inspired. Mostly because I don’t think I’ve heard anything that stopped me in my tracks like that. Like, why is she talking about ME?
I’ve always been a creative person. But I didn’t understand how critical it is for me to have an outlet. Not just a hobby or a cute little project. It is essential for my emotional survival. It’s beyond just the idea of maintaining emotional stability, expressing my feelings, etc. It’s literally a way to come back home to myself.
When I don’t give that energy somewhere to go, it starts bleeding into everything else.
Suddenly, I’m picking fights with my own reflection. I’m feeling “stuck” or behind in life. I’m spiraling over things I can’t control. I’m longing for a connection outside of myself. I’m catastrophizing my whole life. But it’s just like my brain is playing tricks on me. It’s causing me to overly care about things that don’t actually matter.
And I feel like I can say this because I recognize it in myself as well, but I see it happening all around me. It makes me think about times when someone has picked a ridiculous fight, or become an extremely needy friend… maybe they just needed a space to let their juices flow.
It’s like emotional mold. It grows. It starts infecting things that were fine before.
Suddenly everything feels heavier, but you don’t know why.
And here’s the hardest truth she said (and the one I’m still swallowing):
“You need to be making more bad art.”
Because the shame around not being “good enough” is what stops us. We don’t write because we think it needs to be beautiful. We don’t paint because we think it needs to be profound. We don’t post because we think it needs to be perfect.
And in the process, we let all this energy rot inside of us.
And here’s what it made me realize:
I don’t spiral because I’m dramatic. I spiral because there’s a part of me that needs to be making something. Maybe it’s a blog post (hey). It could be a 10 second TikTok or a 5 slide IG carousel. Maybe it’s a novel, a painting, or a sculpture. It might even be a stick figure doodle in your notebook at work. The point is when you stifle that energy, you’re doing yourself a disservice you can’t even begin to understand.
When we ignore that part of us— when we let it sit unused— it turns on us. It attaches itself to people, to insecurities, to feelings that were never meant to hold that weight.
It’s wild how obvious it is in hindsight. Every time I’ve felt obsessive or untethered, there’s been this creative hunger under it. And instead of feeding it, I scroll, I overthink, I wait for the “right moment” to make something “perfect”.
But that energy doesn’t want perfect. It just wants out.
So I’m letting it out. Badly, awkwardly, imperfectly, it literally doesn’t matter.
Because creating something (anything) is how I come home to myself. Every single time.
With love,
Lex
With Love & Lex 
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