When You Want to Be Creative, But All Your Energy Is Used to Survive

There’s a deep ache that comes with wanting to create—needing to create—but finding yourself stuck, even with all the tools at your disposal.

It’s not that the ideas are gone. They’re there, quietly whispering in the background while you go through the motions: getting through the day, managing your health, showing up for yourself and others, trying to hold it all together. Creativity becomes a luxury, not a lifeline—something saved for "when there's time," but time never seems to come.

Some days I stare at my paints, my earring designs, my half-written stories. I imagine pouring my heart into them, but the truth is, my heart feels drained. My energy is wrapped up in just making it through the next hour, the next appointment, the next emotional wave.

And yet… the desire to create doesn’t go away. It doesn’t care that I’m tired, broke, or healing. It’s still in me. Waiting. Blooming beneath the weight of it all.

Survival and creativity can feel like oil and water. One is about getting through. The other is about expression, expansion, joy. But what I’ve come to realise is that creativity can exist in survival mode—it just looks different. Smaller. Softer. Sometimes it’s a scribble in a notebook. Sometimes it’s choosing colours that match how I feel. Sometimes it's writing a sentence like this and letting that be enough.

If you’re like me—someone who was born to bloom, but feels stuck in the dirt—please know: you’re not failing. You’re surviving. And that, too, is an act of creation. Every breath, every small act of care, every decision to keep going is a thread in your story.

I haven’t given up on creating. I'm learning to make space for both—the messy beauty of healing and the slow return of inspiration. Some seasons are about thriving. Others are about surviving. Both are valid. Both are real.

And when I finally have the energy again to bring a vision to life, I know it will be deeper, richer, more real—because it came from a place of truth. A place of peace.