Begin again

A student once asked me, “How do you balance your technical background with your creative practice?” I responded by asking a question, “How willing are you to start over?”

Say something is successful, great, let it go. What if something failed? Same answer. Now ask yourself, how do you begin again?

Completing one successful project is easy. The hard part is what happens next. To me, navigating the space between what you just finished and what you’re about to begin is what creativity means. The craft isn’t just about any one result. It’s about how well you ‘begin again’.

I went on to elaborate that the most valuable thing that we as creatives carry with us is our skills, our time, and our willingness to help someone realize their dreams, because we’re armed with the confidence of knowing how to begin again, and again. It’s simple, honest, and powerful.

At the end of the day, my whole thing is about bringing people together by creating something new from disparate elements. And if you know how to begin again and inspire others to do so as well, a work of art is the byproduct.