Learning a new hobby helped pull me out of a creative block. I recently started drawing and sketching just out of Curiosity. I have always had messy handwriting, so I assumed I would be terrible at drawing too, but it ended up teaching me something important: patience, embracing imperfections, and rediscovering my creativity.

When I was in 3rd grade, I had an art class that I loved. One day, we were asked to draw what we wanted to be when we grew up. Some kids drew police officers or pilots. I drew myself holding a paintbrush because I wanted to be an artist. But my art teacher looked at my drawing and said, “There is no real career for a painter or artist. You should pick something more realistic.” That moment shut me down. I still wonder where I would be if she had said, “You can definitely be an artist or whatever you want to be.”

Looking back, it is wild how one person’s words at such a young age stayed with me, yet here I am, naturally finding my way back to art.

With photography, especially editing, I used to obsess over perfection. I would get so technical, particularly with skin retouching and color grading, that it would mentally drain me. But with drawing, I don’t pressure myself to make every line perfect or beat myself up for mistakes. The results no longer matter as much as the act of creating itself, because I enjoy the process and feel at peace with wherever my pencil takes me. It makes me feel like that kid in art class again, curious, free, and simply creating.

I spent my day off revisiting old work and stumbled across images from my teenage years, specifically when I was 16. It was beautiful and haunting at the same time, to look back at a life that was constantly upside down, yet somehow always wore a smile. That 16-year-old kid was navigating homelessness, bouncing from house to house, all while chasing the dream of becoming a photographer. He documented everything, his smiles, his struggles, his environment. He was fighting through darkness, but he carried an undeniable spark of positivity. Amid toxic living situations, school pressures, and the chaos of life, photography was his escape, his haven.

16 Year old Willie

Now, at 27, I’m in a much better place than I was back then. I have stability, love, and purpose. But there’s a knot in my stomach when I open my laptop and realize my camera has been sitting unused for months. I miss the rawness of life, the fire of creative obsession that once burned so fiercely. I miss every moment leading up to the shot because no matter how flawed it was, it was real.

Is nostalgia grief? I wonder. Am I mourning not the past itself, but the version of me who could feel so deeply, who could create without fear, who could smile through uncertainty? Life has matured me, taught me perspective, and yet in knowing more, in having more stability, I have lost a bit of the passion that once defined me.

Nostalgia feels like a kind of grief, the mourning of a version of yourself that no longer exists, the longing for a raw, unfiltered connection to life. It is bittersweet, a reminder of how far I have come, but also of the parts of myself I have not fully reclaimed.