The Weight of Creation

It all starts with a headache. Not the skull-splitting kind, but the slow, dull throb that feels like a warning. You should stop now. Close the laptop. Turn off the lights. I know it well, like a familiar houseguest that always overstays their welcome. My fingers hesitate over the keyboard, a single sentence blinking back at me, mocking me. Are you still at this? The voice in my head whispers. You know you’re running on dust, right? 

But I can’t stop. The words feel too close, like they’re hovering just beneath my skin, and if I don’t bleed them out now, they’ll vanish. That’s how the creative process goes sometimes, an all-or-nothing race where it seems like I’m always in last place, weighed down by both inspiration and exhaustion.

You can’t create if you’re running on empty. My body reminds me of this constantly, my joints stiff from sitting too long, muscles tense, breaths shallow. I used to be able to ignore it. Used to push through the haze and come out the other side with something resembling ‘art’. But lately, the voice has been getting louder. 

You can’t keep doing this. 

I pause, fingers hovering over the keys. A second wind, or maybe a last breath, but the words come again. I’ve always had this battle with my body and my mind, a tug of war between creation and survival. ‘Art requires sacrifice’, I once believed. But now I wonder…  Am I sacrificing too much?

You can’t keep doing this. 

And yet, I do. Because somewhere in the chaos, between the fatigue and the frenzy, I remember why I started creating in the first place.

It wasn’t always words, though.

After I graduated from High School, I thought my future was set in Fashion Design. Sewing fabrics into a vision to showcase at Westchester Community College, for a while, it felt right. Creating clothes, piecing together fabrics, and the thrill of watching something come to life made me feel like I made the right choice. But then came the deadlines, the late nights before fashion shows, the endless critique from professors who cared more about seams than stories.

This isn’t it. The voice in the back of my mind reminds me, even as I forced myself to sketch out another dress.  

You can’t keep doing this. 

It wasn’t the act of creation that drained me…it was the focus. I wasn’t interested in just clothing. I was interested in the people who wore them, the characters who filled the outfits with stories of their own. 

Characters...

I remember thinking one night as I stared at a dress form. That was when the first inkling came to me…I wanted to create more than fashion; I wanted to create worlds. Worlds where characters can have their own stories different from reality, different from me.

So, as fast as I signed up for Fashion Design, I left it and, on the summer of 2018, I switched my major to Journalism. Where I can freely keep writing and learning more about my world that can be added to my characters’ world.

I am 20 years old now, writing stories, creating TV show plots in Broadcast Journalism class. It felt like I was finally in paradise. I knew that writing was where I belonged. My teacher encouraged my ideas, especially when I sketched the characters for my comic, The Little Witch. He saw something in them, and so did I.

Sadly, with creation comes cost, and soon I learned that creating isn’t always about the joy of it. Money was tight, and even the simplest summer jobs drained more than my time…they drained my spirit. My body felt the weight of it all, pushing too hard, too fast, without enough rest. You know you’re running on dust, right? 

There it goes, I heard it again, but I couldn’t stop. I had to find a way to keep creating, even when the world seemed like it wanted to strip that from me.

In the summer of 2019, I decided to work as a camp counselor for a day camp in White Plains, New York. My goal was simple, to get healthy and enjoy the outdoors. Why not do that and get paid for it. After years of feeling tethered to a desk, I thought spending the summer outdoors would give me a reset.

Nestled within the rolling hills and woodlands of Westchester County, the camp spreads across acres of lush, green terrain, where towering trees create cool, shaded canopies that dance with sunlight. The air is fresh and crisp, carrying the subtle fragrance of pine and earth, a perfect backdrop for endless exploration. On paper, it was perfect.

I convinced myself that this was what I needed, a way to ‘recharge’ without completely stepping away from work. Maybe I could outrun that voice in my head, the one that whispered relentlessly.

But I was wrong.

What I didn’t expect was that even this kind of beauty could feel like a weight. The days were long; up before sunrise, herding kids from one activity to the next, keeping track of a dozen moving parts all at once. I loved the campers; their energy was contagious. But it was exhausting in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

You can’t keep doing this. 

…You’re breaking down…

By the fall of 2019, I found myself sitting in my doctor’s office, where I was diagnosed with anxiety depressive disorder and lumbar arthritis. The diagnosis was a blow, but it also explained the relentless fatigue and pain I had been experiencing. I had to undergo physical therapy throughout the rest of the year, a process that was both physically and emotionally draining.

The voice had been right all along…

And yet, as I stretched and strengthened my body, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would still find a way to keep creating. Even if it meant finding a new balance. Even if it meant learning to listen to the warnings before it was too late.