What do creatives need to do to be seen when applying for jobs?
A stand out cv and a cover letter that shows personality? Not enough. A portfolio of work that shows drive, passion, creativity and a lot of promise? Not enough. Originality? Not enough. More than enough capability to be an incredible asset to most creative roles? Still, not enough.
This makes us question whether employers reject us before giving our applications a glance.
But the worst part, knowing that you’re the missing piece of the puzzle with that glimmer of hope that you will get the email stating that you have been progressed onto the next stage of the hiring process.
Rejection after rejection but we keep on going. But why? Everything happens for a reason and one day, an employer will reach out to you with the same feeling of hope you have when that job looks like the perfect fit. You’re a diamond in the rough just waiting to be found.
Keep on writing, keep on drawing, keep on singing, keep on recording, keep on creating. All you need is a single chance and everything will fall into place.
My Thoughts Get Too Loud
I’m a creative.
I think outside the box when I don’t need to.
I over complicate easy projects with intricate ideas that lead to overstimulation.
I want everything I do to be different.
I am my own worst critic.
I hate everything I do.
I burnout.
I love to learn but my attention span is short.
That person’s cool, would they collaborate?
Am I good at what I do?
How do I get better?
What inspires me?
Everything.
My thoughts get too loud.
I have unfinished ideas stacking on top of each other. I feel pressured into holding remembering every new creative thought before it disappears. My own imagination can be the bane of my life, it is EXHAUSTING.
However, my loud thoughts are where everything I create comes from. Every piece of writing, every idea, every moment of clarity started as noise in my head. The same things that overwhelm me to the extend of a burnout are also the things that allow me to see the world differently, see people differently and appreciate in ways that I once did not.
The vast majority of us share the same issues and it’s never the lack of ideas, it’s that we have too many. Our minds can sometimes feel louder than the outside world, like walking into a busy crowded room full of conversation, but not being able to make out a single word. One slight observation can spiral into a never ending chain of ideas that become too overwhelming to bear.
Loud thoughts can keep you up at night. They interrupt conversations. They make sitting still become difficult and when your mind is always generating ideas, when does it switch off?
The goal really isn’t to silence your thoughts, the goal is to translate them into something that you can understand, giving your ideas another place to live. We all knowingly go through this as creatives, yet we all seem to feel alone in the process.
But I Bought Groceries Yesterday
By: Carley Divish
In a time where shopping online is as easy as finding Shein clothing at the charity shop, I advocate that you don’t sit and swipe on your phone; at least, not for your groceries. This is not an anti-phone tirade. We have all already heard those to death, and while I do have a stance, that you can probably imply, I don’t need to say it. In this article, I am not advocating for taking your brain back, switching to a dumb phone, or any of those new wave woo-woo (scientifically proven) activities. I am advocating for the love of grocery stores! For the beauty of finding a new favourite food in an unexpected place. For uncovering the secrets hidden between the frozen peas and mini yorkshire puddings.
Every time I enter a new city, whether I am visiting, have a kitchen, have just eaten or am more ravenous than the whale that ate Jonah, I love going to the grocery store. Any of them! To me, this run-of-the-mill building reveals what I could otherwise never understand in just a day. The store is anthropology without trying, selling the everyday items of whatever culture I’ve come across: the food, fashions, alcohols, reality. Is there a fresh bread section? Are there strange fish? Cute pastries? What are the popular chocolates? There is so much to learn about a people, a culture, even the specific place just by going to the grocery store.
In a city where 15.4% of us don’t have English as their main language, that is still over 37 thousand people (Southampton.gov 2022). Even then, 31% of school students had a first language other than English. Finally, 41% of births in Southampton in 2022 were to women who had not been born in the UK (Southampton.gov 2022). While I bet some of them were cruise ship emergencies, that is an amazing number! This city has culture, and it has cultures. Both are good to explore, whether you are born and raised English, twenty generations back, or just showed up a couple years ago, like me.
The Thai festival last year exploded from the year before, with a gazebo with a few stalls and performances turning into a full on, park encompassing, gated off, party town. Just a year before, the cleaning professional in my dorm had invited me. At that time the Thait festival was a small celebration in Palterston Park, with acts, food, and a good crowd, but nothing compared to the lines outside the gate a year later. Culture in this city is exciting! And what is more exciting, is the grocery store that accompanies it! Asian Supermarket off of Castle Way and Bargate Street can show you culture all the time, and maybe make you expand your palate, with Triple A Cafe sitting on the first floor. The Italian grocery, M3 Market, sits next to the Polish, Delikatesy Smaczek, just south of Vincents Walk, and all three have given me food I never would have tried before (and a place to wander on a rainy day). All of these places are run by locals, sharing their culture and creating a hub for the cultural diaspora in our city.
I’ll tell you a secret, I once went to one grocery twice in a day just for cake, and it was the same cashier! In the moment, it was embarrassing for the cashier to call me out! But now, I laugh about it. It is not bad to love a local business, they will love you back for it. On the other hand, I once bought food from another cultural grocery store that I hated. It just was not my cup of tea, but I still go back and try new things that I end up buying again and again. I have not been to Italy or Poland yet, but through these local businesses I know a bit about the culture, or at least the minority culture that has created new cuisines (like spaghetti and meatballs or gumbo). I enjoy my days when I can have a nice wander around the aisles, see the food I would never have known, and maybe try some. I bought a huge hunk of the best butter I ever had, just to try something new, and now I faint at the thought of going back to regular Lidl butter. These are foods that people eat, not just restaurant staples: they embody the authenticity we are all searching for, without the struggle between engaging in a new culture and treating it as a commodity. While I am definitely not Italian, Polish, Thai, I can still feel the honesty and the joy of these places through knowing what they eat.
Swiping on your phone is easy, getting someone else to buy your groceries is easy. You’ll likely save some money, save some time, save save save. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “I…go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people… I give them the thumbs up…And, what the computer people don’t realise, or don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around.” Dance around! See the grocery store! Say hi to the clerk even if you’re buying a second piece of cake. You will miss life if you let it go by you, and in Southampton there is so much life to live. So much food to try that expands beyond Lidl’s ‘country of the week.’
Stretch your legs, stretch your curiosity, experience culture. Go to the grocery store.
Sources: Ethnicity, Language, Identity. 2025. Southampton Census. https://data.southampton.gov.uk/population/ethnicity-language-and-identity/ Filgate, M. 2007. God Bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut – CBS News R. Gilbert-Jones. 2024. How Authentic Experiences Shape the New Tourism Economy. Skift Research. How Authentic Experiences Shape the New Tourism Economy – Skift Research
What Has Changed?
That’s a question people rarely stop to ask themselves when they notice they’re happier than they used to be. Most people immediately look outward. They assume something around them must have improved whether that’s better circumstances, better people, or luck.
Sometimes that’s true and life does change, but more often than not, the real change is happening somewhere much quieter. It’s happening inside you.
People rarely give themselves credit for a shift in mindset. They overlook the internal work, the growth that slowly reshapes the way they see the world around them. Somewhere along the way, you changed the way you look at things. You changed the way you respond to challenges and situations that once felt negative and overwhelming, all of a sudden they became lessons instead of burdens.
You started observing and extracting meaning from the struggle instead of letting it take over and define you. You stopped asking, Why is this happening to me? and started asking, What is this teaching me? One of the most beautiful transitions in mental growth as it changes your perspective within every aspect of life.
The truth is, most of the things around you have always been there. Opportunities, ideas, people, possibilities, and they didn’t suddenly appear overnight. They were present the whole time. The difference is that your mind is now open enough to recognize them.
When you refuse to grow internally, you move through life with blind spots. You walk past opportunities because you’re focused on problems. You ignore potential because you’re stuck in old patterns of thinking, we’ve all been there.
But when you change internally, your perspective sharpens. Suddenly, you see paths where once you would have considered them obstacles. You see lessons where you once would have accepted defeat and called it failure. You see possibility where you once saw limitation. Opportunity is everywhere. It always has been.
The moment you find motivation to pursue something meaningful, your mindset begins to adapt. Your focus shifts, your habits change, your decisions start aligning with the person you’re becoming rather than the person you used to be.
Happiness doesn’t always come from changing your environment. Sometimes it comes from changing the way you walk through it and it’s easy to stare at the end and power through, but the journey is always more rewarding than the end goal.
Take Us Back
It’s fair to say that in today’s world, we’re all searching for a happy place, something that distracts us from the chaos. We find ourselves going back to older music, nostalgic games, and memories that return us to simpler times in our lives.
Take us back to when Chris Brown first came onto the scene with a sound and a vibe that felt out of this world, when music truly touched our souls. Take us back to the days when we had to trek to a friend’s house and knock on the door just to ask if they were coming out to play. Take us back to when every game release felt like a genuine level up. Take us back to when everything felt original.
Success today comes from originality, yet so many people copy others in the hope of following the same path, and nine times out of ten, they fall off. People forget what they’re truly passionate about. I mean, what did you want to be when you were growing up? Being a warehouse operative, a receptionist, or a recruiter, just boring jobs in general is far from living the dream and if people say they’re happy then they’re probably not being honest. Every child’s innocent and imaginative mind is something many adults quietly envy. Take us back to when our lives and dreams felt full of endless possibilities.
And here’s the truth: they still can be.
We’re not getting any younger, and living with regret is a heavy burden to carry. You can do it. Anything you put your mind to, you can achieve. When you’re passionate about something and you genuinely love it, the motivation follows. And there is a community out there waiting to support you.
So take your mind back to those big dreams and get creative. We don’t deserve to be trapped in a system that doesn’t care about who we are.
Where You Are Matters
By: Carley Divish
The Common On Film
Southampton is a city that many feel underwhelmed in. People arrive on cruise ships, and leave for London or Oxford. Students arrive for courses and can’t wait to run for the hills (of London or Bristol) when they finish their degrees. The world is out there, and definitely not here. This city is lacking.
That sentiment is a problem for me, and for many people who grew up here, have chosen this city, or simply want to care about the place they live instead of sitting like the Little Mermaid dreaming about anywhere else. Anywhere else will always be there, but investing and caring about the place you live is a skill. Always eschewing the values of the place you call home only leads to a life spent sitting around moping. Southampton is a city with culture and with life. It is a city filled with people who live voraciously. It is a place where, sure, it feels like the rat population parallels the seagull one, but a city worth investing in nonetheless. All you have to do to see that is take the time to care (and play football in the Common).
As a newer resident of Southampton, and of England overall, I have taken some time to check out other cities. I understand why people are drawn to London, to Bristol; to places with easy concerts, genres of people, of music, of clothing, strewn across the streets, bursting as the city struggles to contain it all. Art is everywhere, but it is different. Those cities with struggle inbuilt, but venues ravenous are hubs of creativity, they bring the sun during the rainy winter. No one can deny the environment is different. However, Southampton is growing, it is shapeshifting and becoming just as hungry for life. As a creative, I feel that moving somewhere with an already-established scene can be dissatisfying. Is there space for a new voice, a new perspective in a place where every idea has already been heard? Romeo and Julie die over and over, Jane Eyre finds her feet every day; the twists and turns of novels, on repeat, in places known to circle those plots, creating fame and crushing it again. The opportunities of London, of Bristol, of Berlin are matched by their intense competition for specks of glory. Who doesn’t know someone who moved to London for a music career a year ago, who now works in a coffee shop, returning home every weekend to perform in the New Forest, or the Railway Inn? The life the big city promised has not been delivered.
In a city like Southampton, the scene is there, it is growing and becoming. Sure, effort is required, but it is in different ways. The effort is taking advantage of the opportunities, of the people living here who want to be involved, they just don’t know how. People are craving dj nights, rock bands, clubs and expression! I believe it is far more satisfying to build the scene, creating the community you dream of, catering to your friends, to what can be rather than what is already there. Creating magazines, event series, lifting local artists. We get to bring our own visions to life here, rather than fitting in to the ‘cool but unaffected’ mold of Bristol, the ‘fashion icon’ of London, or the ‘aloof but more interesting than you’ll ever be’ Berliner. We get to create it all. Music has been here, culture has been here. It doesn’t take Beethoven to notice the rock bands campaigning by WestQuay or to see the empty rooms at Heartbreakers, when bands are playing music smooth enough to melt you. To create a scene is to make the new mould, to create a scene is to participate in turn. Across the city, artists, programmers, excited citizens are choosing to work right now. If you aren’t going to shows, aren’t engaging in what makes this city a home, then you’re missing out.
Why leave for a city where everyone is fighting for the same three headliner spots, hundreds lined up down the block to audition? Why go somewhere with a specific genre of person, of clothing, of status? Southampton may not have it all yet, but that ‘yet’ isn’t far off. Art cannot flourish without community, and community cannot be built without effort.
Growing our community. 