Last week I asked a simple question on LinkedIn: What killed your creativity?
The answers broke me a little bit.
One person was told she was bossy at seven and she stopped raising her hand in class. Another said corporate creativity got in the way of personal creativity and she's still trying to untangle them. Someone else named it perfectly: conformity and fear-based belonging. We traded creativity for fitting in.
And then there were the ones who are thriving. They cleared out the old stories. They started making things with their hands again. They refused to stop.
Here's what I noticed: the things that killed our creativity weren't dramatic. They were small. A comment, a grade, a look, a slow fade into "that's not really my thing." Years of being told to color inside the lines until we forgot we ever wanted to color outside them in the first place.
And the things that bring it back? Also small. A permission slip you write yourself or a project with no purpose. Making a thing just to remember what it feels like to make something at all.
Are you looking to figure out what killed your creativity and if it's possible to raise it from the grave? I have something for you.
"Where Did Creativity Go to Die?"
It's part autopsy, part revival guide, part permission slip to reconnect with the part of yourself that used to make things without asking if they were good enough.
The free version drops next week. Click here to get it first →
— Michelle
Un-Boring Brand of the Week: Abodi
I found a fashion brand this week that made me stop scrolling. Abodi is a Romanian wearable art label and they're doing everything right.
The tagline alone: "Clothing, sneakers and accessories for Women, Men and Vampires."
They lean all the way into their Transylvanian roots without being campy or costume-y. One of their signature pieces is the Vampire Castle Bag, a sculptural handbag inspired by Bran Castle (yes, Dracula's castle) reimagined through a brutalist, minimalist lens. Their latest collection is called "The Prologue" and it's described as "a living mythology with ancient figures repositioned in today's world, confronting dominance, resistance, and transformation."
The celebrity list wearing their pieces reads like a fever dream: Taylor Swift, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, Kylie Jenner, Bad Bunny, Jaden Smith, Katy Perry, Gwendoline Christie. Featured in Vogue, Numéro, HERO magazine.
This is what happens when you don't water down your origin story. They took "we're from Transylvania" and built an entire world around it. Sound, Look, Feel all working together. Dark, dramatic, architectural, unapologetically weird.
Most brands would've played it safe. Abodi made a vampire castle handbag.