Creativity and Tech – Week 1

Let's get back to blog writing again sans filter, shall we?

So last week, after years of feeling pretty stagnant in my motivation for my career, I decided to get back to what makes me motivated in not just my career, but life: My creativity. There's a book I'm using called “The Artist's Way” to help me do that (shoutout to Franchesca Ramsey for Bringing Up Doechii's journey with it on her Lemme Fix It Podcast, and also Doechii to be FRFR).

I started on some things early, but, week one is all about addressing your inner critic and instead affirming you creativity. And, WHEW, did I need it for the tech side of myself(maybe I'll talk about my non-tech creative life here, who knows).

See, in the beginning of my life with technology, I felt so incredibly curious and flexed my creativity when it came to tech. There was a sense of play with it, and that lead to discovery. In college and in my early career I spent evenings playing with servers and different Linux distros because it was fun for me and allowed me to learn freely.

Then came me actually dealing with the realities of the tech industry that's built on capitalistic intent. That's built on hiring the best and the brightest, but that meaning folks who don't care about systemic racism or its impacts. The gatekeeping of tech, and especially the infosec industry because if you don't know your shit, you're a scriptkiddie. And finally, because if you're anything but a white male, you will always have to prove whether you are technical enough. No exceptions.

Every experience I had in tech up until this point, I dealt with these realities internalized. I couldn't get past them. And then with more of the external world also reinforcing things, I just...stopped dreaming. Everything felt so far away. I just started to work on survival in this industry, instead of enjoying the ride fully. So when I started hitting walls, I didn't know how to get past them. It was all about protection, which in some ways were good for me (kept me from a LOT worse burnout). But it still didn't lead me to being unstuck.

Last week that came all tumbling down. I realized that I needed to make a change, or otherwise, I'd never really live the life 2020 me who last wrote here wanted for me. Where I wasn't just surviving, but thriving.

So this week, I'm trying to focus on getting back to me. And also this week, is focused on that in giving me more confidence and re-framing my narrative. One of the exercises is addressing some of the inner critics and negative internalization by giving affirmations. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

Now, what that will result in this week, we'll see. But, I've been writing up a storm and I feel like the world needs to see more of my voice. And I'm excited to reflect on this new era of me.