No. 3: From Scientific Logic to Imaginative Mind: Choosing Creativity as Survival

For years, I lived inside lab reports and data sets, the sterileness of fluorescent lights, and the endless cycle of productivity that comes with being “the reliable one.” I worked in cancer immunology—a world driven by logic, precision, and an urgent need for answers. It was meaningful work. Important work. But quietly, it was also work that hollowed me out.

Because I was surviving, not thriving.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped asking myself what I loved and started asking only what was needed of me, and that bled from the workspace to my life outside of it. I buried my creative instincts beneath efficiency. I traded color for clarity, intuition for process, curiosity for compliance. The more I succeeded in that space, the more invisible I became to myself.

And then—something in me started to ache. Not loudly, at first. Just a low hum of “this isn’t quite it.” A weariness that no rest could fix. A quiet grief for parts of myself I had left behind.

Creativity as Return

It wasn’t a dramatic leap, but a slow unraveling. The desire to draw returned first—just scattered doodles on pieces of paper, then writing my thoughts and ideas into a notebook I carried around. Then came the pull toward design: visual storytelling, brand aesthetics, the marriage of meaning and beauty. I felt myself drawn to the sensory, the expressive, the emotionally alive that still touched on the familiarity of what research taught me.

Creativity became less of a luxury and more of a lifeline.

I needed something that wasn’t just functional. I needed something that helped me feel.

Designing, writing, imagining—these things didn’t just inspire me, they began to restore me. I wasn’t escaping science. I was rebalancing what had been lost.

Creativity as Survival

To choose creativity wasn’t just to chase passion—it was to choose presence. To choose healing. To choose to hear myself again.

This shift didn’t come with immediate clarity. I didn’t have a five-year plan. At the time, I had a job, a pregnancy, a life in transition, and a head full of data and dreams. But I knew this: I couldn’t keep shape-shifting into what was expected of me. I needed to create something that made space for me.

So I began to create a small creative portfolio, born not from perfect branding strategy, but from emotional truth and ideas that struck me like lightening. I chose to bring beauty into the world in the way I know how. Quietly. Authentically. From the inside out.

The Merge, Not the Split

I don’t see this journey as abandoning science. Although, I no longer work in a cancer immunology lab, I am still working in the scientific field through environmental efforts and that matters to me. To help others in a field I am skilled at that offers me flexibility and balance in my life. I see it all now as reclaiming my wholeness through balance.

My background in research taught me discipline, structure, and how to follow complex systems with the ultimate goal to understand and to share newfound knowledge to help others. Now, I bring that same clarity and intentionality into my creative work—whether I’m designing a brand, writing an essay, or sketching ideas out for another personal creatvie project.

This path is not linear. It feels more like a switchback that progresses forward even if it feels like I'm moving backwards. It is a return to something both reminiscent of a younger me and steps forward to a newly discovered version of me.

And maybe that’s the whole point: You don’t have to choose between being logical and creative, practical and passionate. You just have to stop abandoning the parts of yourself that are quietly asking to live again and allowing them to be a part of the present version of you.

This is where I am now: somewhere between science and imagination, data and daydreams, explain and express. Still healing. Still learning. Still creating my way home.

—Steph

P.S. — If You're Feeling the Pull to Be Creative, Start Small

You don’t need to launch a business or declare a new identity to return to creativity. You just need a little space. A little curiosity. And permission to begin.

If it’s been years since you let yourself create, or if you were told somewhere along the way that it wasn’t “productive” or “practical,” this is your reminder:

Creativity is not extra. It’s essential. Not because it has to make money, but because it reconnects you to yourself.

Here are a few low-pressure ways to begin:

✨ Doodle in the margins again. No purpose. No pressure.

✨ Write one paragraph about your day, but in the tone of a story.

✨ Try making a collage from old magazines—intuitive, messy, wordless.

✨ Rearrange a shelf or corner in your home like it’s a little art installation.

✨ Take photos of light, color, or quiet things that catch your eye.

✨ Make playlists that reflect different parts of yourself.

✨ Try painting or watercoloring just for the feeling of brush on paper.

✨ Keep a small “creative joy” journal—write one sensory moment you noticed each day.

✨ Bake something just to decorate it.

✨ Create a pretend menu for your dream café, no plans necessary.

You don’t need credentials. You don’t need to impress anyone.You just need to make space for wonder again.

Let it be small. Let it be yours. Let it count.