picture taking SarahWhen I was seven years old, I spent the better part of each weekend helping my mom drag pillowcases full of dirty clothes up the hill to the neighbourhood laundromat. It was one of the integral tasks that prompted my allowance (a shiny toonie twice monthly) and I considered it a very important duty. We would always have time to kill between loads, and my mom would usually be chatting with the other patrons, or flipping through an outdated magazine, so I would often wander to the crumbling cork board at the front covered in ‘for sales,’ ‘help wanted’ postings and the occasional poster for a missing pet.

I rarely found anything there of particular note, with one exception during a hot day during summer break: a rumpled piece of paper covered in a child’s scrawl of waxy crayon letters. ‘Detective for hire’ it said, ‘…can find lost keys, read secret code, solve any mystery’. It went on to say that these services were available for the extremely reasonable price of one dollar. It was at this moment that I felt an incredible stir of excitement – I imagined arranging an elaborate plot, a mystery with twists and turns and hidden notes under rocks. I wanted to do this for no other reason than this opportunity of creativity – the chance to pull someone in to a world that I’ve created and populated with ideas and obstacles and triumphs. It is that exact same sense of wonder and possibility that has led me towards a career as a writer and director.

The community element of this experience has also stayed with me, and The Creative Life Blog is something that I am thrilled to involved in. No matter what the medium there is a thread that runs through the lives of all artists, and I have already found myself relating very personally to the stories that has been shared.

My plan for the future is to continue developing myself as an artist: focusing on trusting my intuition and resisting the debilitating call of perfectionism. Seeing each life experience as a chance to grow creatively can bring new light to difficult situations, and becoming comfortable with vulnerability can make the prospect of failing less devastating. Above all I want to hold onto the excitement that I felt as a child, and continue to see art as what it really is – an endless possibility.

Sarah: On Hidden Notes, Secret Twists and My Struggles with Perfectionism
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Sarah Hager

I have always been a storyteller – using my dolls as actors, writing in cramped cursive in my school notebooks and sometimes with a flashlight in the darkness to scare my sister before bedtime.
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