A Letter: On the Space Between Living and Creating

Subtle. Certain. Unrushed.

Dear Emma,

If we stitched together all our daily voice notes to one another, we’d have the most exquisite playbook for living a creative life. Not the polished kind you’d find in a bookstore, but the messy, magnificent kind. One filled with contradictions, course corrections, deep questions, and wild bursts of clarity recorded between school pick-ups and morning walks. A thousand tiny moments where we said out loud, I think I’m onto something or I’m lost again. A living document of what it means to move through the world as a woman committed to a creative life.

I’m not sure I would even know my artistry so intimately if it weren’t for you. I remember you as this flurry of creativity when we first met—possibly a mix of caffeine and anxiety, flying on the curtain-tail of an unwavering impulse to follow the muse. I sometimes felt dizzy by the ways your devotion knew no bounds, and your stunning stamina for seeing something through with exquisite detail. But what I remember most is how I watched you unlock something I hadn’t yet known. The way creative work became the threshold through which dreaming was possible.

I had slipped so naturally into the corporate real estate world. I mean, could I have been any more the definition of square peg, round hole? Possibly the next expected step, but mostly a way of funding the next fabulous outfit and champagne for my eagerly anticipated weekends. Before you, I don’t think I fully understood that creativity could be the foundation of a life. Not just something you did as part of Year 12 art class, but something you could build a whole world upon. A way of working. A way of living. A way of being true to yourself.

You were the first person I’d seen who lived their art. Who followed beauty with both discipline and abandon. You painted the canvas in vivid colour for what creative work could look like for me, too. In watching you, I saw a new and refreshing kind of life take shape. You modelled this beautiful intersection of inherent skill and palpable possibility. Like somehow, creating art could be a vocation that encouraged the abstract and beautiful ways I saw the world. Within you, I learned that the places my mind wandered were cues, the subtle architecture of a life made not just of art, but of deep, deliberate dreaming.

For over a decade, I’ve shaped my life and work from that place, and perhaps it all began with you—and that serendipitous meeting beside your greeting card stand, long before either of us knew what it would mean.

Funny, I’ve never thought of it this way before, my love. But there you have it. The glorious, self-organising nature of letter-writing casting a whole new light on the origin of our friendship.

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While no creative path is ever truly linear, yours has moved with such steadiness. Each step following the last with a kind of quiet devotion. Mine has felt more like a dance of turns, detours, and the occasional long pause. And if I’m honest, I think I’ve carried shame about that. Like my inability to stay close to the work at all times meant I was flaky, undisciplined, or somehow less committed. That my stepping away was a failure of devotion, a telltale sign I couldn’t see something through. It’s taken me many years to soften those stories. To realise that my rhythm is simply different, and that my propensity to self-exile my art holds its own kind of wisdom.

I’ve come to understand that the discomfort I’ve felt is because often my creations feel like an extension of who I am. To step away has felt like a betrayal of that part of myself at times. I think as creatives, our natural disposition is to pour so much of ourselves into our work that at some point, the intensity becomes too great. Like a flame burning too hot, that requires space to cool. For us to step back and regain our sense of self, apart from that which we create.

That’s how I would describe the past few years for me. Like maybe, if I had stayed too close, I risked getting stuck in the echo chamber of my own thoughts and identity. I risked getting burned. But maybe it’s not betrayal to step back for a moment. Maybe it’s trust. Is it that we push away because we sense the need to expand? As if the distance allows us to live freely, to gather up new experiences and deeper, more truthful insights that make room for us to tenderly reframe what we thought we knew about our work. I think there is something profoundly human about stepping away, whether out of apathy, frustration, or even doubt, only to find ourselves drawn back in with renewed clarity and curiosity. Could it be that this full-circle feeling is a necessary rhythm in the creative process? And what if, instead of resisting it or feeling shame, we acknowledged it as a way of maturing as women and creators?

As I sit here writing to you, my gaze is often caught by the garden beyond my office window, as if the words might drift in from there. I laugh at my internal back-and-forth with deciduous flowers and how I still resist their rhythm. How I cling to their fullness, reluctant to witness the part where they let go. I wonder if we are similar as creative beings—if our growth requires both dormancy and emergence. And somehow, by giving ourselves permission to detach, we can return to our work with less attachment to the initial intention or feeling. Allowing it to unfold into something richer or more aligned. I think I’ve come to understand that creativity often thrives in the tension between absence and presence—well, at least mine anyway.

I can’t help but think that this cycle is part of what makes truly meaningful work. Allowing time away acts as a way of disentangling the surface reasons, the performance, the push. Until what’s left is the original ache. The subtle pull beneath it all. The entire reason why it existed in the first place. But now timeless, rather than fleeting or reactive.

And perhaps that’s what led me here—to this very letter. To Let Me Write You A Love Letter. Not as a project or a product, but as an honest return. A homecoming of sorts to the part of me that still believes in beauty, in truth-telling, and in living a creative life.

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I sent you that voice note last week—remember? The one where I was practically squealing with delight, just after the real estate agents had come through. Gratefully reassured that the tireless work renovating our small but mighty home will reward us abundantly. But more so, because of the way those two women saw our home—or more truthfully, saw me as the creative within it. I stood back as they wandered through, eyes darting left to right, generously gushing at the abundance of colour, art, and consideration. Noting in detail the textures, the feeling, and the unique way our home felt emotive and revealing of the kind of people that live here. Jase graciously gestured my way to acknowledge me when they commented on how unexpected our home felt. And how refreshing it was to move through a space where our hearts were visible. In the eclectic art on the walls, the curated treasures I’ve gathered over time, and the audacity to pair things that seemingly have no business sitting together, and yet, somehow, they work.

Driving to school pick-up that afternoon, I felt almost giddy. Not just because of the financial reassurance, but because, in their generosity, those two delightful strangers seemed to recognise something truer. Not just a well-styled home, but its layers, its intention, the life beneath it. They saw the devotion to living in a way that reflects what so deeply matters to me: a creative life.

It made me realise that my creative life never pauses in the same way my work does. And in that, I began to understand the nuance between creative living and creative work.

Creative living is my lens. It is our lens, my love. It is more of an orientation, a natural disposition to see and shape meaning. Which, my gosh, we do in abundance. I would go as far as to say it’s almost the foundation on which our friendship resides. A common and deep-seated desire to live with beauty, curiosity, and artful intention. Hence, our message feed is filled with photos of freshly picked dahlias, morning light sprawled across the dining table, memory-keeping notes scribbled in our planners, our children’s precious faces, and life’s magnificent and mundane moments. A creative life doesn’t require our effort, as such, or our output. Instead, it reveals itself through presence. The more you notice it, the more it reveals—and slowly, almost imperceptibly, it becomes the way you live. Not something you do, but something you are.

Creative work, on the other hand, is the expression. It’s where our inner life finds form. It’s the intentional moment when creative living is channelled into something beautiful and specific. Something that often requires more spaciousness, more structure, and honestly, more courage.

Our creative work asks something of us—our time, our attention, our willingness to stay with the discomfort of shaping something that doesn’t yet exist. It asks us to choose, to commit, to bring form to the formless. It stretches us beyond observation and into articulation. Where creative living is intuitive and fluid, creative work is a kind of devotion. It invites discipline, discernment, and the risk of being seen.

But because of that, it also calls for time away, for living. It needs us to step back into the world, to feel, to gather, to remember. It seems our art thrives on pause at times. It feeds on our boredom, our heartbreak, our joy, our stillness. And somehow, it simply doesn’t feel sustainable without the ongoing nourishment of creative living.

So much of what I know about tending to a creative life, and translating that into meaningful work, has been shaped in tandem with you.

I’ve tried to leave it, you know. The work, the calling, the spark. But it keeps circling back, time and again. Tapping gently on the misty windowsill of my creative heart. Subtle. Certain. Unrushed. Reminding me who I am. (Turns out, my muse is a real sass like that)

Ten years ago, you taught me to dream—with my creativity at the helm—and in these past few creatively quiet years, I’ve held that close. Even in the personal silence, I held it (white-knuckled at times). And as it turns out, it never left me.

I thought I was writing a letter about creativity.
But really, it’s a thank you, my love.

Love,
Jody x