Carol: Keeping the Fire Alive

“I’m really not that interesting. I hope this isn’t a waste of your time.” This was the first thing Carol said to me. And this was how I knew she’d be interesting.

We met at Carol’s studio in Williamsburg. As soon as you walk in, you feel at peace — a welcome respite from the heat and streets of New York.

Carol left the corporate world, twice. “My past life in operations,” was how she put it. She worked for some of the world’s leading beauty brands before striking out on her own. Now, she runs ceramics classes out of her studio (which is how we initially met). Her goal: To help folks live a more balanced life by weaving creativity into their daily existence.

“I’ve always felt I had two choices,” she told me. “I could live a more creative life, or the recognizable path of operations.” There isn’t one that’s right or wrong, she said. Just that they’ve always seemed mutually exclusive.

Carol asked me how I balance the two — holding a full-time job while pursuing creative work on the side. I’m still working on it, I told her.

I shared a quote via a TED talk from Ethan Hawke. He was talking about the importance of constant creativity, how vital it is for our lives. And he said: It’s not up to us whether it’s any good. So we stop ourselves from doing it. And that’s hogwash. The most important thing, he said, is just to do it.

I call it, “keeping the fire alive.”

That’s when you yearn for a vibrant and creative life, and so you do these little things to feed that flame. For me, taking photographs and learning from people is one way of doing that.

This is what Carol does for others: Invites people into her studio and, for a few hours, helps them escape their life of operations to make something new. To weave creativity into their daily lives. To keep the fire alive.

That fire is the engine of our lives. Whether the creative stuff we do is any good or not, it’s imperative to keep doing it. I believe that when the fire’s burning, we don’t have to choose between the full-time job or renegade artist life. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

As long as the fire’s alive, you have no idea where it can take you.