2026 is going to be the year that I enter my creative self back into the world. I took some time off because I wanted to and I needed to, and now I feel ready to share this part of me once again. The idea of “creativity” and everything around it feels very real and natural to me. I don’t really know what I’d do in this world if I wasn’t able to make something out of something at every point of my waking life. Part of the success that I feel I’ve found in my life I owe to creativity. The ability to dream big, figure out how to make that dream real, and then do it is a big drive for me every morning when I wake up. I like all types of creativity, but music is the art form that’s pulled and tugged at my heart since the beginning so I’ve gone towards that.

It’s scary to be creative and then put that out into the world. If done correctly, your creative act should reflect your soul. In fact, here’s an argument that I’d like to present: every creative act done by someone will always represent their soul because what else can an individual be but themselves? I think about that all of the time. It takes guts and soul to put yourself out there even in conversations. Add music, visual art, etc to those thoughts and feelings and, wowowowowow, it can get scary fast. A lot of times I’ve retreated from the creative part of me because I have been scared to put my creativity and my self out there. When I’ve done that, I’ve supressed a key part of who I am and that hurts over time. No one should be hiding who they are or what they do. We see our governments and our thought leaders nowadays trying to do that to all of us. “You can’t be who you really are because that’s weird or strange and we don’t like it!” is what they’ll say (or something like that, I’m just a person writinhg in a blog I don’t know). We shouldn’t hold onto or supress our creativity. Let it shine.

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This brings me to why we’re here today. I’ve been doing a lot of great therapy work that helps me think thorugh a lot of the stuff swirling in my head. The two big blocks that have in the past kept me from sharing myself to the fullest were as follows. I’ve worked through them over the past few months and I want to share what I found out. This helped me move ahead as a person and a creative being. My hope is that by sharing what I’ve learned I can at least help out one other person in the world who may be experiencing similar thoughts and feelings.

“IT REMINDS ME OF…”

Have you ever shared a song, a poem, a piece of art, or something that you’ve put your soul into only to have someone tell you how they like it followed by the quote “it reminds me of…” followed by a list of artists that the other person feels that your creative output is similar to? I would say that this happens 99% of the time when I share something with someone. For the longest time, that quote would set me off and anger would come up in my head and heart. Over time and through talking it out, I have put that anger away. I realize that the “it reminds me of…” quote that so many folks blurt out is really just part of a script that people have been trained to say in situations like this. Someone along their path must’ve done the same thing, and like every other human being they probably put that in their human being utility belt to stash away for another day. When someone comes along and shares something creative with them, I think they just pull it out in hopes of making conversation or to show the person sharing the creativity that they did indeed give their art the time of day. But the more I hear this phrase, especially these days as I begin to share my music more with folks, the more I think that we should stop using “it reminds me of…” when we talk to people about their creativity. It doesn’t help, and all that’s being done is stating the obvious. I know where I come from, I know who my influences are, and I don’t think it’s helpful or necessarily a good use of time to remind me of that.

Instead, I urge everyone to start looking at other’s creativity from another point of view: ask them questions about it. How did you make this? Why did you make this? What do you hope to get out of this long term? AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: How can I support you as a creative person and how can I help. you get your creativity to a larger audience? The world needs more action and community, and this is one of the ways that we can do it. We have to support each other. We have to help each other grow by asking each other the questions that help us understand ourselves and our world better. We can also support each other by being huge supporters and fans of each others creativity. Create a community. Spread love. This is one way to do it.

Thank you for listening. That is all I want to say for now.

-Justin Hoenke, March 2026