Shipping creative work
This is not the same as being creative.
In fact, they’re very different skills and emotional mindsets.
All humans are creative. Sometimes.
Creativity is a special sort of internal conversation, an opportunity to see a problem or a situation and then produce something that dances with it.
But shipping creative work is a cultural and professional risk.
One way to confirm this is to see how different something feels when it’s truly anonymous. If it doesn’t matter to you whether the work resonates with someone else, if there’s no way to tell and no feedback of any kind, then it’s far less fraught.
Realizing that there are two things at work here–the willingness to lean into problem solving AND the willingness to share it–it’s possible to focus on the part that’s holding you back.