Simplicity is a virtue or so I've been told, so I'll be brief with my introduction. I wrote a poem, filed it away and today I intend to pull it from that file. I'm not going to post the poem itself here today simply because I am one part strategic and two parts coward. In truth, I simply want to use this article as a space to share a snapshot of my creative process and hopefully affirm for fellow writers that inspiration can come from anywhere. Be it a hackneyed topic, a vague metaphor or a vignette specific to your life, inspiration is very personal and organic. No two people see the world the same way. Even identical twins with the same political, religious and social leanings spot things in this world that their counterpart would never take note of on their own. That's what makes the creative process so beautiful: the minute differences in how individuals make sense of the world around them. The snapshot I intend to share is a picture of this concept of the uniqueness of perception and how the basic process of taking in our environment lends itself to the creative process. Without further ado, onto the snapshot, I promised. Growing up in the United States I remember always being bombarded with documentaries and articles about "run-of-the-mill" people overcoming insane obstacles or outwitting life and finding unfettered success as a result. I remember watching a movie about John Hopkins in my middle school health class and thinking to myself, "There is no way I can measure up to that". I was (okay maybe I still am) bad at math, I was an average science student and I was convinced that everything I wrote fell on deaf ears. Point being, I went onto high school and my first job feeling trapped beneath the weight of unrealistic expectations and a perfectionists attitude. Being the quirky kid I was, my default response for that level of internal anguish was to put my angst into words. So I did. Hence, the poem I mentioned earlier came to be. Considering my volatile emotional state at the time, I drew on my feelings of hopelessness as I began the poem. Oddly enough, as I wrote the piece took a turn from a desolate tone to a more angry tone. I suppose part of my brain turned the issue I was writing about around and asked, "Why am I being presented with such lofty expectations in the first place?" The focus shifted from the feelings induced by the expectations placed on me to the motives behind those expectations. That simple shift in thinking added gravity to my poem that otherwise would've been absent. The poem was no longer a simple complaint. It now presented the issue of youth feeling hopeless in the face of unrealistic expectations and explained to the reader that the problem has layers. The poem now felt like it had a purpose beyond my personal catharsis and I felt more impactful as a poet despite hiding the work in my google drive for almost half a decade now. In any case, I looked around myself and saw a pattern: un-proportional expectations causing kids to want to give up. Then I put that observation on paper and found myself thinking about the "who, what, when, where, why and how" of the issue. A thoughtful poem and a reflective article about the process of writing it later, I find that the issue I captured on paper all those years ago is still relevant. The abridged moral of the story: inspiration can come from anywhere. So, take inspiration as it comes and don't underestimate the value of whatever comes out of it.