The O-Factor

There’s this thing that happens when you get an idea. It’s fast—just a flash of an image across your mind—but it’s enough to stop you in your tracks and make you go, “Oh.”

I call it the O-factor.

It’s a creative spark that almost feels like a high. The idea itself is the first high; bringing it to life is the second. That moment between the two, where possibility is buzzing, bright, and just out of reach is intoxicating in a way only other creatives seem to understand. For the last decade, I buried a lot of my creativity. Every so often, I’d still feel that O-factor hit me, but it wasn’t exciting… it was heartbreaking. I wasn’t in a place where I had the time, space, or emotional capacity to do anything about it. Those little sparks became reminders of what I wasn’t able to explore, and something I feel that I took forgranted while I was able to.

But lately… something shifted.

I had a new O-factor moment. A painting idea hit me out of nowhere, and I’ve been holding onto it for dear life the mental visual is like I’m hanging off a cliff and if I let go, the idea will disappear forever. I’m trying to ride that feeling as long as I can, because it’s what makes me feel like I have purpose in this world.

This is exactly what I’ve been working toward all year: Ideas.

A reconnection to that part of my brain that I had forced to go quiet, locking it away like a skeleton in a closet. It’s as if I have finally given myself a permission slip to explore again. Inside, I’m begging life to slow down. Obligations to cease. Just enough for me to sink fully into this new idea and allow myself to be consumed by it. It feels like a new romance, the honeymoon phase where you’re so smitten that the spark becomes the entire world.

And with that one idea alive and buzzing, I can feel others trying to break through. They’re fuzzy, like TV static. Every once in a while I get a quick glimpse of something else forming on the channel, but I can’t fully make it out yet. Still… I know I’m onto something. And whatever that “something” is, it’s exactly what I need right now.

I just need time.

The bane of every creative’s existence.

There’s never enough of it.

So for now, I’m holding onto that first high, the O-factor I’ve been chasing all year and letting it remind me that the creative part of me is alive, awake, and finally ready to be heard again.