I grew up in Amory, Mississippi, a town where creative expression was feared.

While other kids played sports, I lived in worlds of my own making—dancing alone to pop songs pretending I was Britney Spears, filling journals with stories and poems, experimenting with “inventions.” My creative spirit was often met with sideways glances and whispered mockery. I began to hide the brightest parts of me. I developed social anxiety, and the easiest way to express myself was through art. 

But I didn’t have a willing audience or community to share with.

College should have been my renaissance, but instead became a dark period I barely remember. I discovered that alcohol could temporarily quiet my crippling social anxiety, and drugs could briefly fill the void where connection should have been. Everything came to a head my senior year when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a psychotic break.

I found myself in a sterile hospital room shocked and confused, although I shouldn’t have been surprised—mental illness runs rampant in my family. I somehow managed to graduate. By the time I walked across the stage, I was a shell of a person with a diploma—a ghost haunting my own life, disconnected from my creativity, and receding deeper into isolation, full of resentment and fear and unresolved trauma.

Then I found the "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, the mother of creative of wellness. Its pages became the map back to myself, unfolding a truth I'd always known but had forgotten how to live: I was born to create, to inspire, and to help others heal through creative expression.

Through fights with myself and self-reflection, through therapy and sobriety, through daily walks and the miracle of simply drinking enough water, I began rebuilding myself. 

I became my own experiment, testing what made creativity flow versus what damned it up. The answer revealed itself into the Four Codes of Creative Energy: Condition my body to produce consistent creative energy; Contemplation to quiet the competing voices in my mind and allow ideas to bubble to the surface; Craft to develop my skills with devotion and discipline; and Community—the missing piece that could turn solitary suffering into collective healing.

That last code—Community—was the game changer. With baby steps, I began reaching out to other artists, asking questions about their processes that were really questions about survival: How do you keep creating when the fear swallows you? Where do you find inspiration when the well runs dry? How do you transform your pain into something beautiful?

With each conversation, I felt less alone, and I witnessed the same relief washing over their faces too. In their stories, I heard echoes of my own—the isolation, the paralyzing self-doubt, the inconsistency, the bone-deep fear—but also the unquenchable need to create anyway.

I realized we were all struggling in separate rooms, believing we were the only ones feeling this way.

That's when Like Really Creative was born—not just as a business, but as the sanctuary I would have given anything to find in those moments of spiritual obliteration. With every Collage Party where strangers become friends with scissors in hand, every MUSE gathering where ideas flow between unlikely minds, every podcast interview that makes an artist feel truly seen—these are the moments I aim to create with the hope they will stop someone from giving up on their birthright: to create.

I build these creative refuges for that anxious kid in Amory who danced alone, for the 20-something losing himself, for anyone who feels the call to create but doesn't know how to answer it. 

My vision has become my vow: to foster a world where creativity isn't just respected but recognized as essential medicine—where people instinctively know that making art heals what hurts, that expression dissolves fear, and that no creative needs to walk alone. 

After years of wading through fear, I now move through life as what I was always meant to be: fearless, loving, consistently creative, and—finally—whole enough to help others find their way home to themselves.

Thank you for being creative,

Zack