How I Started Living Like a Creative Girl Again
If you've ever felt embarrassed about loving cute things, drawing, storytelling, or daydreaming, this story might feel familiar.
My name is Katya, and I’ve been creating things for as long as I can remember.
As a child, I was constantly making things. I wrote my own little books, comics, magazines, novels, made drafts for computer games, recorded my own stories on cassette players, created my own songs and piano melodies just by feeling (though I never really understood music theory), even built my own tiny websites. Whenever there was time to create at school or at home, that was always the best part of the day. It always felt too short, like I had just entered my own little paradise and suddenly had to leave again.
I was into everything at once. I read books, comics, later manga, watched old black-and-white Hollywood movies and classic comedies, and recorded my favorite TV shows on VHS so I wouldn’t miss an episode while away. After kindergarten, I would often go to my best friend’s house, we lived just a few minutes apart, and we would eat ice cream, watch series, play with Barbies, play computer games, and invent our own dances or recreate the ones we saw on TV during school breaks. Like any other child, I didn’t really think about it, I just followed whatever I felt like creating, and I always had the best time of my life when I did.
At some point, I became completely fascinated by lineart. I still remember seeing a drawing by Arina Tanemura and just staring at it for minutes, completely absorbed in the lines and details. I had this very clear thought: I want to be able to draw like that. From that moment on, I became very focused on lineart. Before that, I loved many different styles, like Winx or Asterix, but that moment shifted something for me. I was just captivated by how something so simple, just pen and ink, could create something so delicate and mesmerizing.
That kind of fascination stayed with me.
There are also very random memories that feel just as important to me. Like a summer where I would secretly sit in my dad’s office when he wasn’t home, charging my laptop with his charger because mine didn’t work, drinking banana milkshake and watching a girly cartoon series while waiting. Or phases where I would drink green tea and eat the same sweet thing every single day: vanilla pudding after school, caramelized sugar while watching a show, or the pastry my dad made every other day that I ate with cocoa. Somehow, all of these simple little things are connected to very specific feelings of comfort and happiness.
Creating was always naturally part of that life.
But over time, I lost that connection.
I went to an academic school that was heavily focused on logic, science, and performance, and my life became very structured. Creativity didn’t really have a place there, and the things I liked, like drawing, cute or ‘girly’ things, were seen as ‘non-serious’, childish hobbies.
I remember very clearly one moment where I gave a presentation about a manga I liked. Before that, people didn’t really have a fixed idea of me. But after that, I felt like I had been put into a box. I could feel that some people started seeing me as ‘childish’ or not serious (in a ‘legally blonde’ kind of way). Even one teacher later kept giving me bad grades for my writing without explanation, even though my writing had always been supported everywhere else before and after that.
And from then on, I kind of lost my own boldness and childlike ‘naivety’. I became very self-aware and careful not to reveal too much about my ‘quirky’ side anymore. I stopped talking about my ideas, my interests, the things that made me excited. I was trying hard to restore my ‘grown-up’ label, to seem more serious, more fitting into that environment.
For years, I wasn’t really myself. I adapted to people around me who were more focused on logic, maths, science, people who didn’t resonate with the way I experienced things. Conversations never had that same energy I was looking for. I missed having people around me who wanted to share ideas, stories, imagination. I used to crave that so much, to have people to exchange daydreams and creative thoughts with, and that never really happened while I was there.
And slowly, it wasn’t just ‘pretending’ anymore, because my creativity truly faded more and more. My mind was always occupied, always analytical, and there was no space left for imagination. At some point, I felt completely disconnected from that part of myself.
I remember moments where I broke down crying and thinking: "I just want to draw and be happy."
Even when I had small creative moments during that time, they didn’t feel the same. They felt forced, like a copy of what once used to come naturally. It was one of the hardest periods of my life. And this is also where my faith in God became something very real and important to me. During that time, I started praying a lot. Talking to God felt calming in a way I hadn’t experienced before, like something inside me was gently being taken care of during my most stressful, hopeless times. He helped me get through everything.
Later, when I finally left that environment, my life started to change in a ‘back to the roots’ direction. However, my creative energy didn’t instantly come back. It actually took years to restore.
At first, I didn’t even try to create. I remember sitting in my room during the day, doing very simple things: watching movies, scrolling through artists online, reading poetry, drinking tea (always two cups at once), reading poetry, listening to music and radio, spending time with my close friends, going on long walks, just allowing myself to exist. For the first time in a long time, there was no constant pressure. I was completely free to do whatever I liked. And this realization gave me an unfamiliar burst of childlike joy that I hadn’t experienced for years.
piece by piece, I started reconnecting with that part of myself again.
And through all of this, I realized something that completely changed how I see creativity:
The main thing that blocks creativity seems to be pressure.
And I mean all sorts of pressure, because pressure can always find a way to linger in your mind, even when you think you’re relaxed. It often appears subtly, in the form of perfectionism, the tendency to want complete control over the end product and to define success only by a specific result, rather than remaining open to other valuable possibilities. Another common one is time pressure, the pressure of deadline, the external pressure to ‘perform’ and to live up to other people's expectations. I've experienced firsthand how pressure can completely interrupt creative flow.
Pressure gets created when you pollute your mind with the wrong things, with things that don’t serve its highest potential.
And the best cure I found for that (second to leaving a toxic environment) was just nurturing my mind constantly with the most beautiful and inspiring things, enjoying my beautiful thoughts, giving my imagination the lead and letting it generate the output by itself, without my logical brain interfering. I let myself do everything intuitively: whenever I had a new idea, I acted on it right away, without thinking much of anything. And slowly, that natural curiosity and imagination came back.
This approach is what everything I do now is built on.
I’m not interested in strict teaching, heavy theory, or structured art lessons. That approach would have never helped me, and I know it prevents a lot of people from reconnecting with creativity, because it feels forced and unnatural.
With butterlines, my goal is simple:
More than anything, I want to help you get back to that inspired state of mind where creating feels natural again. A completely calm, open, and pressure-free state of mind. Because I know the pain of losing that. And I also know the uncomparable feeling of joy you experience once you find it again.
Thank you for reading ♡
