The Most Strategic Thing I’ve Done Lately? Hole Up in My Home Office

 by Kirsten Smith, Marketing Operations Associate

Today, I write to you from my home office—half-empty coffee cups and crumpled post-its splayed across my desk like a reflection of my own madness. I’ve been here for days, trying to figure out when I lost that spark of creativity, and how the hell to get it back. Deep in a Big Magic moment, I’m starting to realize: this is exactly what I needed. 

Lately, I’ve been feeling a little … stale. (Creatively speaking, of course.) It’s not that I wasn’t trying—I was. But it felt like I was checking boxes instead of writing from the heart. I was showing up to the page with the right strategy and the right tone and the right keywords—but no pulse. The ideas were technically sound. But they weren’t alive.

Marketing has a way of doing that to you.

There are so many rules, so many shoulds: 

Post every day or become irrelevant.
Adhere to a perfectly curated aesthetic.
Follow the trends, or fall behind.
If it didn’t get Likes, it didn’t work.
But don’t stop—no, don’t do that.
Keep creating content.
Keep adding platforms.
Pile on the strategies.
More. More. MORE.

We can break our backs trying to follow every best practice in the book—and still feel like something’s missing. And for me, something was. I’d started to feel robotic, prescriptive in my creative process, and to be honest, I’d barely even noticed because the work kept me fixated on production over purpose. 

I’d gotten so wrapped up in my checklists and well-researched strategies that I’d forgotten the heart of marketing isn’t conversion. It’s connection.

And connection can’t be manufactured. It’s not found in a content formula or a three-step funnel. You have to live it. Feel it. Create from it.

So I took Lindsay and Brian’s advice and did the most strategic thing I’ve done in months: 

I stopped.

I pulled back. I quit writing to meet deadlines and started writing just to hear myself think again. I didn’t chase another “hack.” I didn’t repurpose an old post. I sat in the discomfort and let the mess pile up. 

And somewhere in the middle of that paper-strewn desk, a truth surfaced:

I didn’t want to change my approach. It was comfortable. It was easy. And it worked … kind of.

But it also kept me hidden. It kept my work safe and shiny and just distant enough to avoid vulnerability. I didn’t want to write through the hard stuff. I didn’t want to share my experiences on the page. To a degree, I just wanted to tick the box and move on.

Because being honest—truly honest—is scary.

Especially in marketing. Especially when livelihoods depend on it.

But if marketing is meant to connect us, then how can we do it without putting ourselves on the page?

If you’re a marketer, a business owner, a creative… chances are you’ve felt it, too. That slow slide into autopilot. The desk that fills up with coffee cups and content calendars. The checklist that starts to replace your creative spark. The sense that you’re doing all the right things, but the work feels hollow.

And somewhere between the half-finished drafts and half-drunk coffee, you start to wonder:

When did my creativity become a checklist?
When did my desk—once covered in ideas—start to look more like a to-do list graveyard?
And if I keep checking boxes without asking why, what exactly am I building?

Maybe the problem isn’t the system.
Maybe it’s that I let the system start speaking louder than the soul.
Because creativity can’t survive on caffeine and checklists alone.

At some point, you have to clear the desk.
Crack open the window.
And give yourself enough space to make a mess again.
The kind that actually leads somewhere.

Now, smack-dab in the middle of mine, I can’t help but wonder:
Have we become so obsessed with marketing the message that we’ve forgotten to connect with it? 

Is the most strategic thing we can do… to stop performing and start feeling again?

Maybe it’s not about reinventing our marketing.

Maybe it’s about remembering why we started creating in the first place.

Because at the end of the day, there’s no algorithm for true human connection.
There’s only the courage to create something real. 

And maybe—just maybe—that’s exactly what your audience has been waiting for.

About SchlickArt 

SchlickArt, a luxury visual marketing company based in Santa Clarita, started in March 2012 with the simple idea that empowerment creates a kind of authenticity that shines through every camera lens. Built on a philosophy–rather than a product, service or person–SchlickArt has rapidly evolved, meeting fractional CMO, business and strategy planning, professional portraiture, business photo and business video needs as diverse as the community we capture. It’s the desire to take care of you, the client, that drives us at SchlickArt. 

Kirsten Quinn

A lover of strong coffee and yellowed pages, Kirsten Quinn-Smith is a professional content writer and owner of WordSmith Content Marketing here in Santa Clarita. She believes great content can forge a loyal, authentic and beneficial relationship between you and your audience – and grow your business. With each piece of writing, Kirsten's goal is to position you in the content spotlight through audience-centered, strategy-based writing that actually sounds like you. Why? Everyone has a story, and every story deserves to be heard.

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