You’re always judged on the final product and not what it took to get there.
Would people judge things differently if whatever it is that you achieved or put out there was achieved quickly? What if the outcome was created in six months when it could have taken two, would their judgment change?
Nobody seems to ask about the process, about the early nights that stretched into the early hours, or the endless set backs and obstacles that you had to overcome to get a fraction of the work done. They don’t see the versions of you that almost quit, the ones that sat in silence starting into space ready to throw the towel in. They just want the clean version that skips straight to the outcome for the convenience of making a quick decision or a quick judgement.
The most interesting thing about often working with new people and always aiming to converse on a deeper level, is understanding them. Connections are built through understanding the five W’s because the real stories come from everything people skip over.
What you learn from the missed chances, the ignored messages, the times you showed up and nobody showed back, is amazing. Learning how to face rejection and failure and not run from it is a lesson that only you can learn alone. They can’t teach you this stuff in educational environments. And the sad reality, most people’s mindsets don’t allow them to turn negatives into positives.
You build instincts you can’t fake. That doesn’t come from winning, it comes from getting it wrong, over and over, until you really understand.
The journey isn’t some obstacle standing between you and the result. It’s the whole thing. The result is minor in comparison to your journey and if you take that away the journey then the outcome is left with no meaning.
While most think you’re chasing something or working towards something, you’re actually becoming something so much bigger than anybody could imagine.
A neighbour offered to pray for me a couple months ago. I know that often religion can be thrown in your face: the revelers by Westquay with their microphones or the Jehovah’s Witnesses by Poundtown (my better name for Pound Land). They both demand attention, and in today’s world that can be a little obtrusive. But this was not, she wanted to tell her story of finding religion and maybe offer support if I needed it. Because of this, I have not thought too much about the religious aspect. Instead, I have been focusing on the gesture.
The offer came when one day she slipped a note through the letterbox, giving her phone number, her name, and why she was giving this note. Although she did seem kind I did not have anything to ask of her. But the offer, the nonchalant, unexpected, generous offer was clearly notable, as I am still thinking about it months later. I have wondered why that woman’s note stuck with me so long. I never reached out to her, and I don’t even know if I still have it anywhere. For all I know I let it get lost along with the receipts for drinks I bought and train tickets that were washed in my trouser pockets.
In the end I found this: I think that her offer to pray for me is the direction where the community in our city should grow. I read all her words, taking them in, sharing for a moment how she finds calm in her faith, and feeling happy for her. She seemed like a sweet girl who found joy and wanted to share it. She did not push, and I still do not know what she looks like, but she has been the only neighbour to ever introduce themselves to me. When I try to talk to the revolving door of people living across the hall from me, they are surprised when I hold the elevator for them. They are almost taken aback when I remember that they are living in one of the three apartments on my floor (it is not that hard to remember what 5 people total look like). But this girl reached out. She offered to take her time, her love, her faith, and give it to me for nothing.
I often try to reciprocate that spirit. Offering a kind word or making a new friend out of the man who works the grocery store tills, but in a city where addressing social isolation between all age brackets is an official goal of the council, it is not easy. When I was in undergrad, I lived in a city for 4 years. At the end of those years, I saw friends on every corner. I could not go out for an evening without seeing someone I knew by accident. Here, when even Bargate and Portswood are at a high risk for social isolation, how do you begin? A key factor in social isolation is ‘low neighborhood belonging,’ or when you do not feel connected to your community on a smaller scale than the entire city. Along with that, 55% of young people in our city don’t have the money to go out to events. This isolation only gets worse when we get older, so why not fix it now, before it gets worse?
While we each can do things like saying hi to familiar faces on the street or in shops, it is a larger action that we need. Council-run or subsidized events that do not sit behind paywalls are necessary, for every age bracket. Our participation in the ones that do exist can show how we want more. Similarly, transport links across the city can help address this problem. I would like it to take less than 3 buses and a walk to get from my place to the nature preserve north of Shirley. I would like to go to Hobbycraft without it being a day trip. People cannot create community, reverse this seclusion if they simply cannot reach each other or common spaces. Finally, the loss of third spaces for youth is integral. I go to the public library and am told that if I leave my backpack even to go grab a book from a shelf it will get stolen. I still go, though, because there are very few other spaces that do not expect money. Safe, accessible, free spaces are key in addressing this isolation. There are initiatives happening across town, with a knitting club at the library, the vegan kitchen at October Books, and others, but isolation is still an issue that needs to be addressed on a larger scale, not just by individual businesses and locations.
Creating friendships wherever you go is what turns a place from a location you live to a home you will stand by. People need to belong. In a city like Southampton, I think that creating community, reaching out to others, offering a prayer, a dessert, a kind word can go a long way, even if we still need support from larger organisations. No one wants to feel isolated, whether you are 14 or 83, and it takes every day kindnesses along with institutional change to create the place we all want to live. I’ll still think about the girl who offered to pray for me and hope she’s doing well. Maybe someday I’ll meet her, but until then, I will continue my conversation with the man who works the tills at my grocery.
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.
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.
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.
Growing our community. 