The ‘Loved’ Gremlin
On Making Your Life Your Work
Some people choose silence as their spiritual teacher. A monkish path of detachment and contemplation. Others, I’ve come to realise, choose love. Love as a practice. Love as a dojo. A place where devotion is tested and deepened. Not only romantic love—though that’s often where our minds first go—but love as a frequency. A compass. A way of relating to calling, creativity, and the act of making.
In the world of romance, I can be adventurous, discerning, and analytical. In work, I’m often big-picture visionary—yet I can forget the details, skip steps, take rejection on the nose and keep going. What if I switched roles? Borrowed strengths from one arena and offered them to the other? What if the courage I show in art could heal my hesitations in love—and the clarity I find in love could sharpen the way I show up for my art?
Kahlil Gibran wrote that “Work is love made visible.” That idea has become a kind of compass for me. It suggests that if you want to know what someone loves, watch what they make. Watch what they keep showing up for. Perhaps more interestingly, if you want to fall in love with your life again, start making something. Anything. Not for applause. Not for proof. Just for presence.
In romance, we don’t declare our love on the first date (at least not the wise ones among us). We build slowly. We show up. We pay attention. We make time. That’s how I think about the creative calling now—not a one-night inspiration high but a rhythm. Quality time. Showing up even when the mood dips. It's due diligence, structure & discipline. Showing up—again and again. There’s something grounded, even holy, in that kind of consistency.
“A person or a purpose. However you cut it—it’s all love. To love something—not blindly, but deeply. To practise devotion not just when it’s poetic, but when it’s mundane.”
And just as in relationships, some creative flings serve a season—healing, catharsis, experimentation—but others stay. They grow as you grow. For me, that’s been colour and prose. No matter how many other paths I explore—architecture, science, performance, design—these two remain steady. They’re not louder, necessarily. Just... more true. Less costume, more core.
A friend recently told me that Celtic women were poets, warriors, mothers, psychics, and butter-makers. Their art was all of it. No compartmentalisation. It was only during the Roman era that disciplines became rigid, divided by label and hierarchy. Something in me exhaled when I heard that. I’ve always been all-of-it. And maybe that’s the work now—not to collapse into one thing, but to recognise the signature beneath the surface. Not the job title, not the output, but the frequency. That is the art.
My mum always says, “That’s why first loves are the hardest.” Because we go into them with our hearts wide open, unaware of how much we’ll be changed. I think the same is true for our first creative loves—those early fascinations that captivated us before we knew how to label them, monetise them, or explain them to others. There was innocence there. Purity. And maybe, the invitation now is not to reinvent ourselves, but to return to that state of openhearted attention. To love something—not blindly, but deeply. To practise devotion not just when it’s poetic, but when it’s mundane.
Because love and work are uniquely bound. Love is not only a feeling—it’s a practice. And discipline, far from being cold or strict, is its most grounded expression. The true artist—the multidimensional artist—understands this. They show up not just with inspiration but with intention. They build their life not just around what they love but how they love.
Perhaps that’s the question worth asking this week:
How are you showing love through your work?
And how might your work be trying to love you back?
From The Factory >
This week in the studio, I’ve been thinking about frequency, colour, and care—how the way I paint is just as telling as what I paint.
Prompts >
JOURNAL:
Which creative outlets have stayed with me through the years—and why?
Where in your life are you showing love through structure and consistency?
What’s something you’ve treated like a fling that actually wants to be a life partner?
Musings >
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
— Rumi“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”
— Abraham Lincoln“I’m not a writer. I’m a person who writes.”
— Toni Morrison“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
i love this way of looking at art practice: as love. i’ve recently started reminding myself that when i show up for my art, i show up for myself, and that feels related. because by making my art a priority i am loving myself and my life better.