Originally Published February 23, 2018

There are so many people I have met who have truly made me feel like design is some kind of punishment by torture I must endure to survive; like every time I do a project I must pay for it with my soul; that each time I disagreed or decided to speak up for myself I was somehow betraying some client-service provider code. That I deserved to have my heart ripped out at the end of each project.

Dark thoughts, I know. But they are true and not exaggerated.

In case you didn’t know, I already pay with my heart. It is the price of creativity. Without heart, without soul you get nothing. So I do pour a bit of myself or a lot into what I do. I am a person of passion and I have tried to channel that passion and the delight I find in helping someone to visually connect with their vision, that vision that before was merely an abstract thought — until they brought it to me. I am a visual translator; it is my calling. I build bridges with words and break mountains of thought into tangible paperweights that defy gravity. I believe in the impossible that is why I can tap into it visually. Creativity is a faith thing. It’s a shape-shifting, elusive, tantalising thing; it can mock you with its closeness, taunt you while you are awake, evading your grasping mind, till you surrender to sleep and suddenly… amidst the coils of your defenceless slumber, it latches on to you, shaking you up to your core and you awake at the midnight hour like some glee-possessed demon to unleash the idea that has so sharply stumbled into focus.

“There is naught so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

For me, peace came with the realisation that I am that idea.

Haha. How lofty and arrogant that sounds, doesn’t it? But the thing is, every one must reach that moment, when they realise that THEY ARE the idea whose time has come. When we stop hiding from our desire, when we stop feeling we have to pretend, shine a little less or not shine at all…

I have taken my heart back. I have picked up this torn and tattered thing, pushed the bleeding and battered organ, stitches, staples and all, still beating, and pushed it back in — deep, deep, deep into my chest. Embraced its battles and its struggles and its pain. Realise that I may always feel a little like this. Realise that I am a little stronger for it. And that instead of walking back out a mere empty heartless, cold shell, allowing God to sew it back into my chest where it belongs and where it can heal.

So I will keep my heart and I will defend my art.

I have come out of all this alive. I am still struggling to stay myself, and not some cold shell of a person no longer able to dream, or to be open to helping others and making a difference. But I do know I can now walk in the world without cowing to someone’s whim; that I can be myself and still do what needs to be done to help a client or achieve a goal; that if I have to crush someone else’s heart in order to achieve greatness or relevance then maybe I don’t deserve this art. That I can and deserve to make a viable living without prostituting my craft…or my soul.

I have taken my heart back and I am keeping it.