DO REPLY: January 2025 Recap

ESCAPING THE CREATIVE BINARY

Something that forever shifted my (Olivia) perspective on creativity is a moment that happened years ago during a meeting. I was working as a strategist at a marketing agency and we were wrapping up some planning for the week. “I’ll get the creative team going on that front, can you talk to the non-creatives?” my coworker said to me. It was an innocent comment not at all out of place in our conversation. But it struck me - can someone really be non-creative? Of course, many skills are easy to identify as creative - design, photography, painting, sculpture, etc etc. But are those really the only avenues where creativity can be applied? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that limiting the definition of creativity to exclusively artistic skills is undercutting the power of what creativity really is and who it is for.

Creativity is your imagination expressed to the world. It’s not a binary 0 or 1 personality trait, it’s innate in all of us. Your creativity might not be channeled through an artistic medium; it might come through in the ways you organize a spreadsheet, combine flavors in your cooking, or make a playlist for your friends. It might be the way you solved a problem at work when no one else could crack it. When you open up your definition of what a creative person looks like, you’ll begin to notice a perspective shift in how creativity can be applied to everything.

I urge you, if you consider yourself non-creative, ask yourself when you began to see yourself that way. Identify the moment (or the person) that convinced you that creativity isn’t for everyone. These moments are often painful for us to look back on. Now, consider this letter permission to think of yourself in a new light. You have a unique perspective, and it might be just the thing someone needs to see.

Start here: Any time you find yourself about to say “I’m not a creative person,” swap it with “There’s no such thing as a non-creative person.” Slowly but surely, you’ll begin to see the places in life where you are already practicing your unique brand of creativity - it’s been there all along. And after that, you’ll discover new opportunities to implement it, like exercising a long-neglected muscle.

By removing the creative/non-creative label from our language, we can be free to define for ourselves how creativity shows up in our own lives. Our world needs creative minds more than ever, and that includes you.

DO REPLY:

Our first-ever two part prompt!

Part 1: Draw three blobs - size and shape aren’t important. Send them to us for the second part of your prompt - we promise it won’t take more than 30 seconds.

Part 2: Draw faces on your blobs. See what characters come to life and send them to us.

READER RESPONSES

Thank you to everyone who shared their responses this month!