Afraid to Create

Shannel Wheeler
3 min readJan 29, 2024
Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels

Yes, we’ll do it!”

Boy, was I naive when I first started designing. I thought I could create a masterpiece at any time. I definitely proved myself wrong when it was time to put pen to paper or try to create something on the computer.

But that didn’t stop me.

It was during my college years that my roommate and I first discovered freelancing. Do you mean, someone will pay us to make something in Adobe Illustrator? I remember one of my first clients; it was a local businesswoman (can’t remember the business) who needed a logo. God bless her because I still cringe thinking about what I made for her. The vision of it looked amazing in my mind, but the execution — well that was a different story. It was a pixelated mess!

“Well, what happened?” you ask. Life went on. She accepted the work. Did she use the logo? That’s a mystery. Truth be told, I made more cringe-worthy designs after that. But those designs eventually went from bad — to mediocre — to good — to hey, that’s pretty awesome!

Some of you are afraid of this part. The part where you aren’t sure of yourself. The part where you think about designing and get excited, but then talk yourself out of it. The part where you let what’s in your head, stand in the way of what’s in your heart.

You want to create, but you’re afraid of

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Shannel Wheeler

Left-brain creative | Brand/Design Implementation | Design Instruction and Inspiration | Creating with Purpose: https://shannelwheeler.com