Emotional Raccoons and Other Creative People

I have been a musician since I was ten years old.

Which means I have spent most of my life around creative people.

Writers scribbling notes into half-broken notebooks. Musicians arguing over one chord change for forty-five minutes because “no no no, this version feels emotionally incorrect.”

Artists staring into space like they just received a transmission from another dimension.

Honestly, some of my favorite people on Earth are creative people.

And after years of conversations in rehearsal spaces, coffee shops, backstage corridors, late-night diners, and deeply caffeinated voice notes sent at unreasonable hours, I have learned something important:

Creative people are not rare.

We just define creativity far too narrowly.
Somewhere along the way, we collectively decided creativity only belonged to people with gallery shows, albums, publishing deals, or film credits. We turned it into a title instead of recognizing it as something deeply human.

Because creativity exists everywhere.

In the chef who plates a meal like it belongs in a gallery.

In the teacher who keeps searching for new ways to explain something because they refuse to let a student feel left behind.

In playlists, storytelling, decorating tiny apartments, humor, parenting, survival.
And the more creative people I meet, the more I realize the truly creative ones are rarely obsessed with appearing impressive.

They are obsessed with noticing things.

The shift in somebody’s voice when they are trying to pretend they are fine. The color palette in an old sci-fi movie. A melody that arrives out of nowhere while doing dishes. The strange emotional significance of a screenshot you absolutely swore you were going to organize later.

Creative people are basically emotional raccoons. We wander around collecting strange little pieces of humanity. The way somebody laughed while trying not to cry. An oddly specific memory attached to a song. A line from a television show that somehow cracked your entire emotional rib cage open at 1 a.m.

We drag these tiny shiny moments home because some part of our brain whispers, “You’re going to need this later.”

And honestly? We usually do.

I remember being in the school band room, surrounded by music stands, instrument cases, marked-up sheet music, and that specific sound of everyone warming up at once. Total chaos. Forty kids playing different things at different tempos in the same room, each of us lost in our own part.
Then the director would raise the baton, and something would shift.

We would rehearse the same few measures again and again. Someone’s entrance would be a half-beat late. A section would rush through a transition. We would stop, reset, try again. It felt tedious at the time. But slowly, without quite realizing it, we were learning something that had nothing to do with notes.

We were learning how to listen to each other.
How to pull back when someone else needed space. How to lean in when the music asked for it. How to turn a room full of separate sounds into one shared feeling.

That is the thing I wish more people understood about creativity.

It is not really about perfection.

It is about connection.
A song says: “This is how I hear the world.”
A painting says: “This is how I see it.”

A dance says: “This feeling exists inside my body and I need another human being to understand it for a second.”

And that is why creativity matters so much right now.

Because in a world constantly asking people to optimize themselves into exhaustion, creativity still asks us to be present instead.

To notice.
To feel.
To interpret.
To share.

The funny thing is that some of the most creative people I know do not even think of themselves as creative. They think creativity only counts if it earns money or applause. Meanwhile they are pulling entire rooms out of despair with one perfectly timed joke, or communicating love entirely through food, hospitality, or tiny thoughtful gestures that most people would miss.

That is creativity too.

And creative people tend to carry this strange combination of sensitivity and resilience.

They notice everything, which means they often feel everything too. But they keep making things anyway. Even after rejection. Even after burnout. Even after criticism.

That takes real courage.

Because creativity is not about perfection.

It is about participation.

It is about saying: “I was here. I noticed this. I felt this. Let me offer something back.”

Not every song becomes a hit. Not every idea succeeds. Not every project changes lives.

But creating changes the creator.

I believe that deeply.

Some of the happiest moments of my life have not come from achievement. They came from collaboration. From hearing something suddenly click into place in a rehearsal room.

From watching someone light up because somebody finally understood the weird little idea living inside their brain.

So if you are somebody who has ever said,“I’m not creative”, I would gently challenge that.

Have you solved a difficult problem?
Made somebody laugh?
Cooked something with care?
Found a path through a difficult season of life?
Made another person feel safer, calmer, or more understood?

Then you have participated in creativity. You do not need permission to claim it. You do not need credentials, a spotlight, or to monetize every meaningful thing your brain creates.

Creativity helps us process grief. It helps us celebrate joy. It helps us communicate when language fails. It helps us imagine futures worth fighting for.

And it reminds us that there are still people trying to make things beautiful.

That matters more than we think.

Sometimes artistry looks like a symphony.

Sometimes it looks like somebody making dinner for people they love after an exhausting day.

I have seen both change a room.

Remember…

✨Be Kind. Do More Good. We Got This.

💫Until next time, lovelies, keep jibber jabbering about the stories and things that move you.