I still remember its weight. The large plastic box was at least three feet long, a foot and a half wide and one foot deep. Filled to its brim with Legos, there was no lifting the box. The best I could do was drag it from under my bed to that magical spot at the base of my 6-foot hand-me-down LoveSac bean bag, where I would sit for hours and create. Thousands of pieces shifted like sand as I dragged the box into place. Light and color glimmered across the shiny blocks from the sunlight that poured through my window.
This box of Legos was gifted to me at nine years old. My babysitter’s brother no longer had a use for them, soon college-bound. I had an affinity for taking things apart and reassembling them anew. I had no money to buy new kits and no instructions for this old one. In the era before accessible Internet, I was on my own. I learned early the art of pure creation; anything I imagined became possible from this box.
I took an architectural approach. I sat in my room for hours on the weekends, plucking and studying the pieces from what looked like decades of miscellaneous Lego sets. Each colorful block was a world of possibility. Collectively, their stories were infinite.
My creative process was imaginative and unflinching but methodical. I learned this about myself early. If I fixed my mind on something, it was as good as done. Detailed, multi-story homes, airplanes with seating and passengers, the square-block Swedish apartment complex I’d recently moved from—in time, it all came to life. Each from a unique blend of memory and imagination.Â
The stories are infinite.
As a recent immigrant, I wasn’t yet fluent in English. Most things still didn’t make sense to me. Though I was at the top of my class in Sweden, school in this new land made me feel stupid. I developed migraines at a young age. My mind was overworked, struggling to keep up. I came home at least once a week with a headache so big I’d crumple in agony and cry. But this, the surgical art of creating new worlds and visions through colorful blocks, all made sense to me. It was slow, patient, fluid. It followed the whims of the heart, not the regiments of scholastic syllabi. It reminded me of drawing, my first passion. And music, the artform my father built his career on. And thus my architectural journey began.Â
Thirteen years later, post-graduation, at the lunch counter of the revered architectural firm I was interning at, I had a sobering epiphany. Despite the linear discipline of American education and ideology, I realized that this emphatic passion for creation was never about architecture, at least in the literal sense. I did not care for machine-like 70-hour workweeks or about the structure of the windows on the 74th story of a skyscraper in Beijing. What drove me was the process of creation. It was architecture in its purest, most figurative form—ideation, innovation, collaboration. I loved creating, doing my part to shape ideas and the communities and movements that gave them life.
I ultimately left architecture, much to the dismay of my community and loved ones. And to my dismay, their doubts and fears came true as I proceeded to struggle for a decade. I lived paycheck to paycheck trying to build a life for myself through entrepreneurship and community development. Thoughts about what I’d left behind crept in, naturally. Especially on those days when I struggled to nourish myself or pay my bills. But I never regretted my decision. Though I still loved architecture and trust that I could have built the rooted purpose I desired in that space, too—it didn’t feel like my path. It still doesn’t. It was that simple for me.
What drove me was the process of creation. It was architecture in its purest, most figurative form—ideation, innovation, collaboration. I loved creating, doing my part to shape ideas and the communities and movements that gave them life.
Another decade or so later, I’ve never been more grateful for my path. It took me far longer than I wanted to find stability, and it cost me a lot of ease and comfort in my twenties. But I went through the gauntlet while I still could, while the risks and familial costs were low. Now, I spend every day creating with collaborators who fuel me. I spend every day dreaming up new ways of working, creating, and being, and I work hard to make it plain through business, creativity, and community. And most importantly, I’ve built a life that gives me the time and space to create freely on my own. It’s as if I pull out my Lego bin from childhood daily and create whatever my heart desires.Â
I sit at my desk and assemble worlds through words, as I once sat at the foot of my bean bag and assembled blocks. The stories are infinite. From this same imaginative, unflinching and methodical creative process, I’m building the life of my dreams. I could not be more grateful that I trusted my gut and my creative instincts. I get to spend the rest of my life living out my art.Â
This is the power of creation.
Questions for the Community
What’s your greatest creation in your life? What would you still like to create?