Hey there Reader,
Earlier this week, my husband and I went to see The Invite.
When it comes to seeing movies on the big screen, I’m all about the blockbuster. But with the school holidays underway, blockbusters were in short supply. Having recently watched Seth Rogen in The Studio, we thought we could at least count on a few laughs, and that felt like the next best thing.
And laughs we got. But the film also delivered more than one moment of uncomfortable truth.
There is much I could say about its most obvious subject: what can happen to a marriage over the long term, especially once children, work and the relentless demands of everyday life enter the picture.
But what stayed with me was something underneath that.
It was the resentment that can accumulate when you realise your days are no longer shaped by a sense of possibility. Instead, they’re dictated by the practical demands of suburban existence: work, school, meals, bills, household jobs and the endless coordination required to keep a life running.
And I found myself wondering how much of that resentment is connected to the loss of creativity.
Angela, played by Olivia Wilde, once went to art school. In her home hangs a photograph she took when she was younger, evidence of a part of herself that appears to have been left behind.
Now, much of that creative energy is directed into decorating their apartment and agonising over the precise shade of blue for the bedroom.
There’s nothing trivial about creating a home that feels good to live in. I certainly wouldn’t suggest that choosing the right blue doesn’t matter.
But it becomes a problem when it’s the only place left for your imagination to go.
Joe’s loss is even more explicit. After a brief flirtation with musical success many years earlier, he’s now a teacher who won’t touch the piano in their apartment because it’s too painful a reminder of what might have been.
Both characters are living competent, recognisable adult lives. They have jobs, a child and a home. They’re functioning.
But there seems to be very little room left for experimentation, curiosity or the parts of themselves that don’t have to be useful.
One of the visual details I kept noticing was how often the characters stood in doorways, framed between one room and another. The possibility of something different seemed to remain visible, even when they couldn't quite step towards it.
I think this reflects the place creativity occupies in adult life for many of us.
We often treat it as something we’ll return to when the work is finished, the house is sorted, the children or parents need less from us, and we finally have enough time.
But that time rarely arrives on its own.
Instead, creativity becomes one more thing we used to do.
We used to paint. We used to write. We used to play music, take photographs, sew, garden, rearrange rooms, cook without a recipe or follow an interest without needing to know where it would lead.
The loss is not only the activity itself.
It's the loss of a particular way of relating to life.
Creativity asks us to notice, imagine, choose and respond. It allows us to make something that did not exist before, even if that something is only a meal, a paragraph, a corner of a room or a different way of spending an afternoon.
It reminds us that the world isn’t entirely fixed and that our role isn’t limited to maintaining what already exists.
In other words, creativity gives us some authorship over our experience.
This doesn’t mean everyone needs to revive an abandoned artistic ambition or turn a creative interest into a career.
In fact, making creativity productive may be part of the problem.
Not everything needs to become a business, a body of work, a side hustle or evidence of talent. Some things can exist simply because they make us more interested in our own lives.
Perhaps the resentment we sometimes feel towards the demands of adult life isn't always telling us that we need a different life.
Perhaps it's telling us that we need more room within this one.
🪞Something to consider
What's something you used to do that made you feel more curious, in flow, or open to possibility?
It may not be the activity itself you miss. It may be the version of you that was alive while doing it.
✨Try this
Choose one small creative act that has no requirement to be useful, impressive or shareable.
Give it twenty minutes this week.
You might take photographs on a walk, move the objects on a shelf, write a page by hand, cook something unfamiliar, sketch badly, arrange flowers from the garden or return to something you once enjoyed.
The activity matters less than the decision to make room for it.
Think of it as stepping through one of those doorways, not into an entirely different life, but into a slightly larger version of the one you already have.
💌 A note about what's next
This is my first newsletter after a pause.
During that time, I've been thinking carefully about what The Good Life is really here to explore, and it's beginning to take a clearer shape.
At its heart is a question I keep returning to:
How do we design lives that support joy, meaning, beauty, agency and depth?
That means thinking about life from the inside out, through wellbeing, identity, books and the ideas that help us understand ourselves.
It also means thinking from the outside in, through our homes, routines, environments and the practical shape of our days.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be exploring more of these connections here.
I'm also preparing to open The Good Life Companion, a slower and deeper place to work with these ideas through thoughtful reading, reflection, and conversation.
I'll share more soon. For now, I'm glad to be writing to you again.