Feeling stuck?

A sneak peek into my creative journey before accounting and audit took all the creativity away.

In my elementary years, one of my hobbies was drawing. I liked drawing all sorts of maps. I liked drawing people and sceneries.

I also enjoyed my art classes. I remembered a lesson from art class well.

“If you can draw a circle without a compass, you can be an artist.”

That’s BS, by the way, and one of the things kind teachers tell us to encourage our passion.

But anyway, I believed my teacher. Because I knew I could draw circles without needing a compass.

That same art teacher encouraged me to join the student publication as an editorial cartoonist. Despite my timidity, I said yes.

I asked my mother to buy me a Staedtler .5mm gel pen.

Because I needed it to ink my pencil drawings

The pen became my most expensive and most prized possession.

I used that pen to draw all sorts of cartoons and anime characters.

But come high school, I joined this journalism workshop.

I saw other students like me drawing their editorial cartoons.

One particular kid was so damn good at it. I got intimidated.

I thought. “My creations are petty in comparison. There’s no future for me in drawing.”

I stayed in the publication. And I wrote instead.

News, features, sports articles, poems, and stories. Even photojournalism.

I experienced each one because our publication was small, and not many people joined except those already on the honor rolls.

But, I still returned to drawing, although I did most of my work in private.

One day, a high school teacher encouraged me to join a school-wide poster-making contest.

But I didn't know the rules for poster-making.

My teacher told me. "Just go, bring your oil pastels, and draw."

So, for my poster, I first drew a border (because I remember that’s how we were trained to start a drawing in art class).

And guess what?

I lost that contest, of course.

But after the competition, one of the judge-teachers was kind enough to tell me that poster-making doesn't use borders.

You're supposed to draw on the entire surface. Borders don’t exist.

Now, you know I’m a failed artist.

And when I started working, I continued to disappoint that little child who only wanted to draw, like the narrator in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince.

I dialed down my creativity.

As a growing adult in the corporate world, I thought creativity had no place in a dry and functional workspace.

But I was wrong.

My creativity later led me to a career shift that defined one of the happiest periods of my work life.

And even now, I’m still using my creativity to fuel my entrepreneurial projects.

Creativity is one of those skills that I feel can be uniquely human, no matter what.

You might have seen AI producing creative works. But you can feel its inauthenticity.

There’s no depth, no magic, no soul.

Also, I don’t believe that creativity is an innate talent.

We can train ourselves to be creative.

We each have our version of creativity.

Comparing your self-worth to other peoples' creative endeavors is another pointless exercise.

And the most important of all is to have encouragement.

To have at least one person who’ll tell you…

It's ok to go beyond borders. It's ok to go outside the box.

PS. Do you still find joy in your current job, or is it time to re-invent the box you are in?

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Tin here! Welcome to Busy Season Journals, a newsletter made especially for you by a fellow accountant/auditor, adventurer, and coach-guide. I write about my adventures as an accountant and auditor and everything in between. You get deeper insights and personal stories on how to shape a happy, meaningful journey.

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