2025 has been quietly life changing for me. Not because of some external milestone, but because I finally found my way back to the things I loved when I was a child. Drawing. Writing. That small, private universe of creativity where nobody tells you what you can or cannot be.
I have always loved to draw, even though I never saw myself as an artist. This year, I decided to challenge myself with eighty flowers in a notebook. Why flowers? I am not entirely sure. Maybe because they are beautiful, maybe because they are simple, maybe because they are endlessly symbolic. I have always been a tiny bit envious of people who can draw from their imagination, because with aphantasia I do not see images in my head. I need reference photos. For a long time I thought that limitation meant I could not be an artist.
But actually, it just means I work differently. And that realization was surprisingly liberating.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I suddenly got ambitious and applied for an art grant for a project centered around abstract landscapes. I will know in January if I am selected. That whole process pushed me so hard that afterwards, I slid straight into a mini burnout. I did not know what to draw next. Did not know how to continue. So I took a little break. And now I am gently guiding myself back.
The one thing that never stopped, though, was writing.
I have found my writing groove this year in a way I did not know was possible. I dictate my essays. I just talk, my brain runs free, and my AI assistant turns it into text. My mind is fast. It connects ideas in ways I cannot always capture with typing. Dictation lets me keep up with myself. And honestly, I believe writing is just thinking in another form. If you can think, you can write.
One reason why dictation feels so natural to me is that I have been creating TikTok videos for the past three years. Videos force you to talk endlessly, to respond quickly, and to shape thoughts in real time. Because of that, I have woven talking and thinking into one ecosystem where forming opinions instantly feels easy. My thoughts come out in full sentences, and I do not overthink them. So creating text by speaking feels like the truest extension of how my mind works. I just let the words flow.
And through all that endless talking that I have been doing for years, and now turning that voice into text, I have realized something important. I am actually an essayist. Not a fiction writer, even though I tried that path in the past. Fiction requires you to build whole scenes inside your mind, but with aphantasia that simply does not happen. What my mind does instead is observe patterns, connect ideas, and follow how things evolve over time. I am endlessly fascinated by the future and what might happen next, and that is the natural territory of an essayist.
That realization has pushed me to take part in writing competitions that are meant for essayists. I do not know if it will lead anywhere, but I can at least say that I accomplished something. That in my adult years I have found completely new joys, and that feels really good. It has opened something in me that I did not even know had been closed.
Once that door opened, everything else began to move with it. This whole process has made my creativity bloom. I can wander through subjects endlessly. The future, the past, my own life, global shifts, Plato, Socrates, and somehow they all connect. I have realized that this is what I want to be. A creative weirdo who thinks, writes, creates, and enjoys the world through imagination and curiosity.
And something I have noticed, both in myself and in others, is that people often become happier when they return to the passions they had as children. I see this reflection everywhere. In my opinion, we should do more of that. You are feeding the little person inside you who once wanted certain things, and at least in my case, it is absolutely true. Returning to those childhood passions has brought me so much joy!
And one of the best decisions I have made lately was coming back to Hive. I do not even know why I left in the first place, but returning feels like slipping back into a home I forgot I had. The conversations, the community, all of it has been good for me.
So yes. These are the changes I have made. Quiet shifts, gentle choices, and they have made my life better in ways I did not expect.
