Crabapples or Peaches?

What are the fruits of your creative work?

Is your creative work producing crabapples or peaches?

If you were thinking about your creative work as producing literal fruit from a tree, what kind of fruit would it be? Would people be excited to eat that perfectly ripe, sweet fruit, or would they just see a bunch of bitter little crabapples littering the sidewalk?

It is important to soften your expectations around the outcome of your creative work, especially when you are trying something new. It might take some time for your creative tree to finally grow to the point where it can produce some big, beautiful peaches that everyone loves. Because who doesn’t love peaches!?

Not everything you make will be something that other people love. That’s ok!

Sometimes people will just look the other way, step over and ignore your creative work, and other times they will LOVE what you have to offer and will want to give it their focus and attention and be part of it. If you are judging the value of your creative work based on the outcome of what you create, or based on the reaction of people around you, you’ll probably end up feeling super disappointed. 

The value of creativity is not just the outcome: there are benefits from the process.

The greatest creatives of all time produced many failures alongside their masterpieces. They recognized that failure was part of the process, and they appreciated and enjoyed the process more than the outcomes.

The creative process can bring a lot of joy and fulfillment into your life, even if what you make needs some work to get it to a level where others can enjoy and appreciate it. And hey, a lot of people even enjoy crabapple jelly, so maybe you just need to pair or package your creative work the right way in order to get it to a point where people are interested.

Growing good fruit takes time.

It takes time and effort to create something great. There is a long process of learning, growing, and developing your skills to the point where people outside of your friends and family genuinely appreciate the work itself. This is true of traditionally artistic creative projects, and also the pitches, proposals, and products that you craft in your career.

Work on developing your growth mindset.

There is no substitute for skills and experience. (Unless, I guess, if you use AI to make things for you… Even then though, it takes expertise to know how to use those tools to create something that is worth creating. I use AI for a lot of things, but I don't ever have it write for me. The fruits of AI still seem to have a fake, synthetic flavor, like the peaches you buy from the store instead of the ones from the farmers market, or if you’re lucky, off your own tree.)

The good news is that you CAN learn. You can work to get experience and develop new skills. If you believe in your ability to learn, grow, and change, then you can keep moving forward and making things that keep getting better and better, and sweeter and sweeter.

What are you hoping to create? 

Are you working on music? Art? Entrepreneurship? Crafting? Or just crafting a more fulfilling life? Whatever it is, don’t get discouraged as you keep working towards growing your beautiful little tree. If you keep watering and nourishing it, you’ll eventually get it to where you want it to be.

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