How Coworking Keeps The Creative Spark Alive

My home coworking space: 25N Coworking

I am a creative.

How do I know this about myself so confidently? I see the world differently.

While my friends see a pretty sunset or watch the tumbling of the ocean, I see things in a different light. A gradient beyond belief that is endless. A moving, being, expanding, 3 dimensional churning array of light, matter and color.

And in response, I want to make my own version.

My imperfect, never-finished, always-changing replica of what I experience.

I am not content to only snap a mental picture or even one on my iPhone. No, I must create. Through paint on a canvas or lines in Illustrator, I create from the inspiration I see, feel, hear and know to be true in my innermost being.

So. I am a creative.

And while I’d like to think my mind is an endless bucket of efficacious bright paint, the truth is, it’s not. No, sometimes it’s the blank walls, empty pages, and lonely house that extracts the spark right from me. That leaves me feeling utterly uncreative. Occasionally I can lock myself in the still quiet of my home office and make something. But most of the time, I need people. Any day of the week I would take a noisy and bustling, jam-packed-coffee shop over the serene of my own home(at least when I am creating, that is). In these moments, when I desperately need to resurrect my creative soul, I try to go back to my greatest inspiration:

People.

Conversations.

The feel of a voice in the air or the idea that is constructed between friends.

An unseen exchange between strangers.

While it’s nice to think that all my artsy juices are stirred up alone, that only takes me so far. I can only rack up so many individual ideas in my head on my own in my home on Pinterest. Sooner or later I am hungry for the rush of revived reasons to render my perspective on paper. And at our core, isn’t that what we all want? To feel passionate and delighted in the work we produce? Whether it is expertise with excel sheets or architectural blueprints, we all want to feel the thrill of an idea moving its way through our minds into matter before our very eyes. But we can’t somehow arouse these passions on our own.

We were created for community.

Created to create in community.

When I was first introduced to coworking I truly didn’t understand the creative power it holds. I am not talking about some secret potion infused in the air — although that would be pretty cool–but more the impact of connections between humans.

There is something powerful about different people in different seasons with different talents, all leveled on the playing field of sitting in the same space, yet all unique in their mission and vision and goals. Coworking opens the opportunity to be inspired by someone else you may never have run into.

Just last week I started up a conversation with a day trader sitting across from me. I’ve never seen such beautiful patterns and colors as a stock market graph. Nor do I begin to understand the intricacies of how it works! But it made me stop.

Think.
Google.
Ask questions.

And there! That’s it! That’s the power of coworking.

Did you catch it?

Me, an artist, more focused on the lines of colors than the opportunity they represent, was interrupted from my world to step into someone else’s. That is what coworking is all about. The best kind of interruptions that change and challenge, intrude and invite.

That keep the creative spark alive.

If all we do is log in and log out in the movement of our jobs, we will never be challenged to think. To create. To be inspired outside of our daily grind. And while there is a time and a place for heads-down-trudging-through work, that can’t be our whole lives. We need the vibrancy of people to wake us up from the hamster wheel of ingrained thought patterns we develop over time and break us through to new ideas.

A coworking space keeps the creative spark alive. It keeps my creative spark alive. It puts me in a place to meet other people. To people watch and to people learn. To embrace community and allow interruptions on my way to grab more coffee, to alter my own work.

Each of us is different for a reason. You are unique.

No matter what job you have or role you play, your work matters. People need to see you. To hear your ideas and experience your thoughts. And you need others. To break into your world and light, again, the creative spark.