For most of my life, creativity existed alongside expectations.
Analytics. Algorithms. Performance. Presentation. Polish.
Creating brought me joy, but that joy was often countered by the worry, waiting, and weight of monitoring sales, tracking performance, hoping for some industry award, and feeling that everything I shared needed to be beautifully designed. That side of it felt like work. It was often stressful, always anxiety-inducing, and sometimes deeply frustrating.
I had spent thirty years living by the rules of an agency creative leader. Even after I began writing and publishing my books, I could not escape the gravity of that world. I was looking at my work through the eyes of a creative professional but feeling it as an artist, and the two were in constant conflict.
The honest truth is that I didn't really know how to be an artist.
Then, on one of my usual early mornings, something shifted.
I thought of Anne’s pottery. I thought about my daughter’s artistic passions, my son’s lifelong passion for music, and my mother-in-law’s life as a painter who shows her work in galleries. None of them stood apart from what they created, anxiously measuring whether it had performed correctly. They stood beside it. They shared it. They allowed it to connect them with other people.
It struck me that I had been doing things completely wrong.
I didn't need to present myself as a brand producing polished content. Don't get me wrong, the work had to be polished. I love and live design as much as storytelling and world building. I wanted it to look professional and capture the vision I had for it. But once that was done, I needed to stand beside my work as an artist. To share the joy, vulnerability, hope and passion in making. To meet people, have conversations, listen to their stories, and stand alongside other artists and makers who had also brought something of themselves into the world.
It felt like an epiphany.
Everything changed.
Since then, I have stepped away from the confusion of analytics and algorithms and moved toward people, passion, presence, and conversation. I even stopped speaking about, and looking at The Awakened World and The Durajan Series as a product.
It wasn't and never was.
It was an expression of me. A part of me. Memories, questions, fears, hopes, and observations, all poured into this story.
I've learned to stand behind tables filled with my books, alongside Anne with her pottery. We've started to attend events side by side as Alania Press and Alania Crafts, each in our tents, and we've been having an incredible time. I have spoken with readers, teachers, booksellers, artists, makers, and people who simply stopped because something about the work caught their attention.
The entire process has become pure joy.
My career and my lifelong passion for creativity, design, and technology have been blessings. That world was wonderful to me, and I will always be grateful for everything it taught, and continues to teach me. It helps feed my creative curiosity. Those years gave me the experience and skills I now use to build nearly every part of Alania Press. But I no longer have to carry the anxiety and stress of that environment into everything I create.
For the first time in my life, I understand the profound meaning and feeling of being an artist.
I can simply create the work, stand beside it, and share it with others.
And I feel creatively free to follow this dream.
