What makes you interesting isn’t just what you’ve experienced, but also what you haven’t experienced. Embrace your limitations and keep moving.

"Here’s what artists understand. It’s a three-word sentence that fills me with hope every time I read it: Nothing is original." -Austin Kleon
How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)
1. Steal like an artist.
2. Don’t wait until you know who you are to start making things.
3. Write the book you want to read.
4. Use your hands.
5. Side projects and hobbies are important.
6. The secret: do good work and put it where people can see it.
7. Geography is no longer our master.
8. Be nice. The world is a small town.
9. Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done.
10. Creativity is subtraction.

Shortly after I wrote my little diatribe on commitment in my professional life I stumbled upon this ten step process to claiming and mastering your creative flow. (Thanks Rebecca for posting this delightfully insightful/inspiring article).

"If I waited to know “who I was” or “what I was about” before I started “being creative”, well, I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it’s in the act of making things that we figure out who we are. You’re ready. Start making stuff. You might be scared. That’s natural. There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called imposter syndrome. The clinical definition is a “psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.” It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing. Guess what? None of us do. I had no idea what I was doing when I started blacking out newspaper columns. All I knew was that it felt good. It didn’t feel like work. It felt like play. Ask any real artist, and they’ll tell you the truth: they don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing. Every day." -Austin Kleon

It's nice to know I'm not alone in this confusion. I'm just a small part of a phenomenon. And I love that my natural instinct is to make things. Be it a photograph, a mix tape, a pie, or an installation, my heart is always comforted by my busy hands. I hope that this is the reason my pictures speak to people. And why my cookies taste so dang good. Because there's a piece of me in everything I create. There's love, and time, and attention to detail. I am not sure what "my thing" is quite yet, but I know it involves creating things. And hopefully one of my hobbies will turn out to be something more.