Keeping Your Ignorant Youth Alive Through Creative Expression
Adulthood hits like a slap in the face—suddenly, that carefree, imaginative kid you once were feels like a distant memory. The spark you had for creation gets buried under bills, responsibilities, and a lifetime of “adult shit” that’s meant to make you “grow up.” The sadness comes from the realization that you used to look at the world with wide eyes, unafraid, dreaming big, and doing whatever the hell you wanted. Now? You’re just trying to make it through the day without losing your mind.
As a kid, the world was yours for the taking. You didn’t care about what was practical or realistic—if it existed in your mind, it could exist in real life. You’d stack up Legos like you were building empires, you’d draw worlds that nobody else could see, and your imagination ran wild like there were no rules. Then adulthood came, slapping you in the face with deadlines, expectations, and a whole lot of "this is how the world works." Suddenly, the only place to create was in the quiet of the night, when everything else had calmed down and the world you once lived in felt like a distant dream.
The problem with getting older is that life’s heavy bullshit weighs you down, and you lose touch with that raw, creative energy. The grind, the hustle, the bullshit responsibilities—you’re constantly playing catch-up, just trying to keep your head above water. And somewhere along the way, you forget what it was like to feel alive through creation. The awe, the wonder, the childlike belief that you could do anything—those things fade out as you get older, and that’s the hard truth.
But here’s the dirty little secret: you can still keep your ignorant youth alive. You don’t need to throw your responsibilities out the window or pretend you don’t have adult shit to do. You just need to reconnect with the parts of you that still thrive on creation—the part of you that loved to build, write, paint, and let your imagination run wild without boundaries. That kid never truly left you. You just need to remember they’re still there.
For many of us, life tests our creative spirit in a different way. You grow up, and the world forces you into a box—the box where your dreams aren’t worth shit, and all that matters is survival. The rules change: focus on the grind, fit in with the crowd, get your shit together. Anything that doesn’t fit neatly into that box feels like a waste of time. But here’s the kicker: the very struggle of survival is what feeds your creativity. That’s where the real stories are. The hustle, the grind, the raw energy of fighting for what you want—those things shape the art that the world eventually wants to see. The key isn’t abandoning them. It’s learning how to use them.
Maybe you pick up a camera and start capturing the truth of the world around you, showing it for what it really is. Maybe you pick up a pen again and start writing, telling the stories that people are too scared to hear. Creativity doesn’t have to be an escape from reality—it can be the way you process, the way you make sense of all the shit life throws at you, and the way you transform the world into something meaningful.
The more you let that inner kid run free, the more you’ll realize that creativity is the lifeline that pulls you through adulthood. It’s the thing that keeps you grounded, even when everything else is falling apart. It reminds you who you really are when the world tries to put you in a box. Because deep down, that creative fire you had as a kid never really went away—it just got buried under all the shit you were told you “should” be doing.
Adulthood is a dirty, frustrating game. But your creative soul doesn’t have to play by the rules. Keep it messy, keep it raw, keep it rebellious. Hold onto that ignorant youth—the world may try to shut it down, but it’s the thing that will keep your fire burning when the rest of the world tries to snuff it out. Creativity doesn’t give a damn about rules. It’s messy, it’s real, and it’s the only thing that can truly set you free.