Finding My New Tribe

If you read my last post, you know I’ve been searching for a creative home, a place to connect with others who understand what it means to live a creative life.

Well, I think I may have found the beginning of that tribe.

It started when I came across a gentleman on YouTube who goes by Way Walker. He’s an author, artist, and the founder of a creative collective called The World of Creatives. His videos immediately caught my attention they’re thoughtful, challenging, and full of heart. He talks about creativity not just as a skill or a hobby, but as a way of being.

He touches on something I’ve thought about for years — how “the great” creative movements throughout history were sparked by groups, collectives, and communities. But Way brings that idea alive with research, wisdom, and lived experience. I was drawn in instantly, like a moth to a flame.

I ordered his book, Create or Die: 48 Keys of Creativity, and was challenged right from the preface. Here’s a quote from the very first paragraph that hit me right between the eyes:

“Most people see the words Create or Die, and they think I am talking about a physical death—but you, you see the world differently than most. Something in you knew that I am talking about an abstract death. For people like me and you, we feel alive when we create, and death are all the things that pull us away from our passions and self-expressions.”

That line stopped me cold, in my tracks.  It challenged me. Because I know exactly what that means.  I have died that death.

When I was younger, creating wasn’t something I did, it was who I was, my identity. Whether it was peering through a microscope, drawing, painting, or building something out of wood, I always had to be, making something. The future felt wide open, and creativity was my compass.

After my grandfather passed away, everyone sifted through his belongings. I was very young, maybe six.  I don’t know why, but I was drawn to his camera, a twin-lens reflex that shot 120 film. I didn’t even know he had a darkroom at the time, but later I realized most of the old family photos were his.

That camera started it all.

As a teenager, I took it out to Forest Park near my house, and photograph trees and park benches.  I’d go into New York City, shooting what we now call street photography — people, parks, city textures, and light. I loved it. One thing I miss about living in NYC is that no matter what you’re into, what your interests, there’s always a place, a club, a class, a store, a group of people who share your passion.

A friend later sold me an enlarger, and I started teaching myself everything I could about photography. Reading, studying everything that I could find.  That curiosity eventually led me to the School of Visual Arts, where I learned how creative choices from composition to chemicals to paper could change the emotional impact of an image.

Photography has been the thread running through my life ever since. Over time I transitioned to digital, then to Photoshop and creative composites, combining images, textures, and imagination. Later, I fell in love with encaustic, mixed media, and collage. For years, I’d come home, turn on some music, and dive right into creating.

But the truth is, over the past few years, something has changed.  I’m more passive.  While I don’t have a television, I watch much more on Amazon Prime, or HBO Max then I should.

Maybe it was just life, the divorce, my mother’s long battle with cancer, her passing, leaving a job of 20 years, moving back to New York in The Catskills now, after decades away. Or maybe it was just exhaustion.

As I unpacked my things after the move, I realized I had become a collector. A collector of materials, tools, and ideas; more than a creator. I had all the paints, inks, and different kinds of papers, but I wasn’t using them. They sat on shelves like ghosts of unfinished dreams.

That brings us back to Way’s book and searching for a tribe.  I want to link to his sites

https://www.youtube.com/@world-of-creatives

https://a.co/d/5uVsbzU His book Create or Die

https://www.worldofcreatives.com/ His Community

That abstract death he wrote about, I felt it, I’m experiencing it.  I’m living it.

I had all but stopped creating. I wasn’t alive in that way anymore. And that realization hit me harder than I expected.

So, this is where I am now.  Standing in that space between loss and renewal, between isolation and connection, between a deep dream and waking up.  I joined his community for a year.  With that price I also sponsor someone that can’t afford to join.  That’s a plus.  But for me, I’m rediscovering what it means to create because I must and finding my way toward a new community that reminds me, I’m not alone on this path is a step in the right direction.  I’m creating a daily routine, a habit, a new creative path.  Perhaps it’s The Path Less Traveled!  Perhaps it’s my creative path.

Maybe this is what finding your tribe really means not just surrounding yourself with artists, but with people who help you remember what it feels like to be alive.  Well, it’s my creative path and I’m going to travel it.