Every one of us is creative. Whether you’re an engineer and you write really elegant code, or you’re a writer who researches and imagines and writes a book of fiction, or you’re a home cook who loves to use ingredients in interesting and inventive ways.
Your craft shapes how you see, what you think about, and the ways you interact with the world. It molds your identity.
A sign painter can’t help but scrutinize every billboard or the typeface on a sign and how it fits with the identity of the business. An editor can immediately see the extra space after a period on a dinner menu.
What happens when the sign painter picks up the violin or the editor starts doing photography?
I believe the years we invest in our craft transfer to other creative endeavors. In other words, the more we exercise creativity, the more it becomes a muscle for various creative outlets. Every time we try something new, we bring pieces of our understanding of expression and it influences how we act.
What feels like starting over is really an attempt to bridge our creativity, to expand and enhance our ability to express. The legendary graphic designer of the famous I 
NY icon, Milton Glaser, said in How To Be a Great Graphic Designer, “I believe that you convey your ideas by the authenticity of your being.” By playing with a new craft, you’re expanding your sense of being and enhancing your ways of expressing ideas.
This doesn’t just apply to creativity. A friend of mine who was in finance became a full-time illustrator. The creative life also requires a business mindset, and he has a decade of experience behind him — from taxes to business models and invoicing to contracts. He has a decade of dealing with nightmare clients and terrible bosses. He’s ready for the creative life. He’s showing up, dancing with fear, committing to the long haul, and growing the habit of shipping.
As a writer, I see the world in words. When someone speaks, I can envision a chat bubble above their head and “see” the cadence, tone, and delivery. In between these exhales and sounds are emotions and intentions — what’s quipped as “reading between the lines.”
In the last year, I played a lot with photography and much of the feedback I received was around how fast I leveled up. This was a huge ego boost for me (Seth Godin even mentioned it), but I realized my puffed-up chest was almost blocking my vision. I had to pause, step back, and reflect on how creativity is transferable and re-appreciate what talent is. My leveling up was propelled by my seven years of being a writer —being open to learning new things, appreciating small details, and stringing together words to create an image in the reader’s mind. Pitfalls like failure, self-doubt, and laziness were all less daunting because I had experienced them before and had developed coping mechanisms through my experience in writing.
The same way an athlete pushes herself to do crossfit, swimming, marathons, and then ultra marathons, her body and mind are the vehicle for accomplishment. She builds muscle, flexibility, tenacity, and strength; this foundation enables her to engage in different kinds of exercises — to test her limits, explore her edges, and evolve her sense of being.
When you think of creativity in this way, starting new things should go from daunting to exhilarating. What new traits will you learn about yourself? When you step outside, how differently will you view the world? As a writer who picked up a camera, light is no longer just light — there’s harsh light, soft light, moody light, and so on. The beauty of light catches my eye in ways I never noticed before.
When we focus less on the progress of our craft and more on the process of our becoming, our art will level up naturally. I learned that being a good photographer is not about technical prowess — it’s about learning to truly see, connect, and tell the story. A great writer is fearless in their truth and speaks honestly about what they see and how it can be better. These are skills, not gifts. They take practice and time. These internal traits produce excellence.
Ultimately, nothing is wasted — dead-end jobs, failed projects, relationships that don’t work. If you view them as avenues for growth and change, then that’s what they will be. When we gather what we’ve learned and remix it to fit the context of our life, we bring our better selves forward, providing a space to learn, to try, and to become.
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