We were lucky to catch up with Abi Wall recently and have shared our conversation below.

Abi, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

It’s definitely a goal of mine to make a living creatively. I started out believing I needed to go to college for something reasonable, so I put myself on the business track. After life shook me up a bit, and I had to leave college in California, I realized I couldn’t go back to school for anything less than my passion. I ended up majoring in Creative Writing, which gave me permission to work on the projects that light me up inside. The pandemic also helped me prioritize my joy, and I found my way back to my passion for dance. I grew up competing and have always loved the community. I thought for a time that I wouldn’t dance again because of the negative relationship I had with my body and mental health. Now I lead adult dance classes. I mainly teach K-Pop, a genre of music I didn’t even prioritize listening to before re-entering the dance world (but am now obsessed with). There was a lot of personal growth and inner work that came before I stepped into this role as a teacher. I have found a community, good friends, a new source of income that’s allowing me to transition out of my old cleaning job, and the belief that I will be able to succeed living my creative dreams as long as I follow my inner knowing.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m an avid reader, writer, dancer, teacher, and light-worker. Instead of playing with toys as a baby, I flipped through books I couldn’t read yet. I’ve always had a strong connection to creativity, energy, and my love of sharing and exchanging that excitement with others. My art forms continue to show up and surprise me. I reconnected with my love for painting just a few weeks ago. I’ve always loved to sing. I can play a few instruments. I like to choreograph. I’ve dabbled in writing songs.

My loudest creative energies have always shifted between writing and dancing. Introspection and action. Dance connects me to people, my physical presence, my emotions. Teaching movement allows me to connect to my higher calling. Growing up in dance classes, I did not always feel safe to be myself. I tried to mold myself into the type of dancer and person that other people would respond to. When I realized I was listening to a cruel inner dialogue, my number one concern became quieting that voice and replacing it with something much kinder. I probably first identified that cruel voice out loud at 17, and by 21, I was a different person. With a new inner dialogue, one that sounded more like a friend, I went back to the dance world and was immediately presented with an opportunity to teach.

In my classes, I am focused on reconnecting adults to their joy, their wonder, and their inner child who understands learning something new takes vulnerability and patience. I am not concerned with perfection or extreme emphasis on technique in my classes. I am focused on how taking a dance class makes you feel. I aim to create a safe space where we can learn and enjoy together. I am in flow when I’m taking a dance class, and now I can find flow teaching them as well.

I’ve always said, and I still believe, that writing novels is the long game for me. I fell in love with storytelling at such a young age, and have such a passion for finding and telling stories for the specific few. I believe that when we are creating for the love of it, it’s impossible not to sprinkle truth into the things you create, and people always respond to truth. I have written novels I don’t love and I will write more. Maybe one day, one of them will be published. I’ve learned to let go of my expectation and enjoy the process. Creativity doesn’t often give you much of a choice where it’s leading you or where it drops you off.

I’m also not going to limit myself to one creative venture. I want to allow in every creative opportunity that excites me and make my living that way. So far, allowing myself to transition between my passions has created new pathways in my brain, new connections and understandings that I desperately need in order to continue. Life influences art, art influences art. I need to toggle.

I’m also highly introverted. I need time to myself. Time to think, to recharge, to not be perceived. But I found out during the pandemic that I also need people desperately. My creativity always surges when I’m around other like-minded people, and it’s become a mission to both find those spaces for myself and hold space for myself.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Therapy. I think most blockages for creatives (and anyone) happen when we are storing emotions or experiences in our bodies that we haven’t processed. There was a time when my self-worth relied heavily on what I produced creatively, which in turn began to shut down my creativity. I remember a time when I was working on a novel and wrote something like 4,000 words in a day (which is a lot of words!) and thinking to myself after that it wasn’t enough. How could that be? Any writer would be proud of a 4k word day. I wasn’t. My inner critic was so loud that it didn’t matter what I wrote or how much I wrote — it wasn’t enough. And neither was I.

I began therapy and my healing journey because I had writer’s block. (Not because I wanted to better myself or my experience of life. I just wanted to write one perfect book. I think this is very funny.)

At this point in my journey, I understand that my priorities were backwards and upside down. You take care of yourself, the creator, and experience all that you can in life. Then, you reflect. You respond. You create. There is a process to this life, to our desires, to our expression. If we try to speed up the process, beat ourselves into creative machines, we will only find pain. Our truest and deepest creations will come when we’re ready to birth them. In the meantime—learn to be your own biggest fan. And keep learning from what you’re making.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The fire that lights all of my creations is something I am deeply interested in studying in this lifetime. To learn when it shows up, why, how fast and hot it burns. I believe that fire inside is deeply connected to love and a knowing beyond what I have access to in this moment. I believe allowing yourself to partake in your own version of creativity is the highest form of self-love, and in turn, one of the best ways to contribute to this world. When we unapologetically create, especially in a world that likes to scream at you to conform, we are showing each other that its okay to come out of our hiding places. It’s safe to enjoy this life, to struggle with it, to want to talk about it, to not want to talk about it. It is so easy to miss each other these days, to misunderstand, to jump to conclusions, to hate. We find each other in our creations. We remember all that we have in common. We remind ourselves that we are love, we are connected to love, and it’s powerful stuff. It’s magic-making. It’s all I’m interested in.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @abilwall
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abi-wall-05a21b13b/

Image Credits
Nathan Bosseler