Creative, Creating, and Costs

There’s a cost to being creative. Inside you, there’s an urge to think up an original thought, to invent a new thing, to express freely.

There’s a cost to creating a real thing too. Months of work, years maybe, and what will you get in return?

The cost of being creative pushes you to action. The cost of creating, of committing to one thing, pushes you to hold and consider: “What am I going to create?” “What am I going to create that will be worth my time?” “Can I say no to everything else for this?”

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When you create, you don’t know if you’ll make up for the time commitment. You’re never sure.
When you create, you don’t know what you’ll learn in the process, and whether it’ll be of use.
When you create, you don’t know who will be interested, if anyone.

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The good news is that creating gives you mastery over some skills. Which skills? You’ll find out.
It gives you a story to tell. What story? You get to write it as you go.
It helps you find new problems to solve that others might share, it helps you understand the lay of the land, it gets you talking to new people, it gives you proof of what you can do.

Most importantly, creating gets you proof that you made a decision. The scarier the decision, the better the creation.

There’s a cost to deciding to create. But for you, it might be a bigger cost if you don’t create, if you don’t take that decision to create, at all. It’ll be costly either way.