I am not Picasso, obviously.

I like to draw, but is that enough to call myself an artist? I believe it is.

We are often told that we can only bestow titles upon ourselves when we’ve truly earned them and have gone through enough hardship to achieve the honor.

But I hate to break it to you — you don’t have to be at Bob Ross’s level or have tortured artist trauma to be creative.

I’ve shifted to this mindset over the past month or so, where I tell myself to just have fun and create art. .

Just start, then figure it out and make your pieces good along the way.

This tiny shift in approach has spilled over into the rest of my life.

I am, or was, a very outcome-based person. I wanted to finish my paintings, ceramics and writing, so I could post about it and prove to the world that I held worth.

I still post, but what I share comes as a result of a slow-burning process — where I chip away at an article, slowly refine the lines of a drawing and savor each step of a new journey, because it excites me to jab at a task until I figure it out.

I do this until it comes easily to me — naturally, even.

Writing articles, coming up with the ideas and actually following through proved to be hard at first, but now I’ll be on my way to get a coffee and will suddenly hear a first sentence or a title ring in my head.

The important part is that I write the idea down — no matter how imperfect or incoherent it sounds — and then go through days rearranging sentences till it makes sense to me.

It’s like playing Tetris — but with my life.

We are always called to rush and hustle, so we can move on to the next best task.

But in moving so fast, you forget to feel yourself.

We often feel the need to interpret how the external world views us, instead of how we view it. Maybe your long-time crush is actually not the person you see yourself with when you take a step back and look. Maybe the job you applied for is a pursuit you felt pressured to do — not what you felt in your soul was right.

To live without acknowledging what works for you and what doesn’t results in crashouts, burnout and endless questioning of what you don’t have to be.

It is in the little messy bits and pieces of uncertainty that you truly get to know who you are — where you stand or where you wish you stood.

It is when you sit back and observe that real clarity enters, and your heart feels excited because it’s finally being acknowledged and listened to.

To be frank, sometimes I do not have the energy to figure a task out, and I just want to be done with them. And that’s okay, too.

Life is not meant to be painful all the time. That is a pill that has been hard to swallow.

Throughout my life, I’ve been dealt much pain. At some point, I succumbed to the idea that every day would be a rough one. I ended up ignoring my own needs because I didn’t know how to listen to myself.

But now, I pick and choose my battles. I ask myself, “Okay, Nino, are you making an unnecessarily painful day for yourself? For what?” You don’t get rewarded for your pain and suffering.

Let go of what you need to and focus on the parts of yourself that need nurturing. Those are what will get you where you’ve always craved to be, and where your soul goes to sleep at night, dreaming of being.

Life isn’t fair, and I accept it.

Growth is not all grind — it is also rest. It is in the balance of enjoying the experience of living and being a human while also showing up for the moments that are non-negotiable to you.

When I do the duties that feel hard, it gives me a sense of purpose and self-respect. This makes me keep my word to myself — a message that if anybody has got my back, it’s me.

After a long day, I often don’t physically want to write or create, but sometimes I just do it out of the sake of inviting play and curiosity into my dreadful day. I quickly find myself zoning out for hours, enjoying the sound of the keyboard or the stroke of a pen and the smell of freshly etched ink staining my palms.

I’ve given up chasing an imaginary life and instead focused on implementing small steps to doing what feels good to me to what is important to me.

Think less, do more and feel more — even in the uncertainty of it all.

We think so much about doing various activities — and yet we never do them, because we want to be great now, be famous now or be big now. But all the aspects we’ve ever deemed worthwhile in our lives have been achieved through the slow buildup we’ve allowed for it to have.

Be intentional with whom and what you spend your energy on. Do it scared, do it confident, do it anyway and watch yourself not only succeed but grow in the experience of life.

No one was born a great painter — they splattered paint on the floor at five.

So, approach life like you are five and be willing to learn — not simply do or accomplish.

Be yourself, the version that is forever growing and learning — not because you force yourself to, but simply because you allow yourself to.

It’s so lovely to have the opportunity to play around with life, test through trial and error and see where it eventually takes you. Watch how your life flourishes when you begin messing up.

Enjoy your experience, and I can almost guarantee you that you will end up somewhere wonderful — magical, even.

How lucky we are to not know where we are going, but to be happy that we’ve taken the step and are going somewhere at all.

Till we meet again,

Nino.