There it was…

Picasso’s Guernica.

I’d seen pictures of it before. Studied it. But nothing could’ve prepared me for its size.

It was massive. Possibly the biggest painting I’ve ever seen.

I stood there for a while just taking it all in. The abstract figures. The exaggerated expressions. All the chaos. Something made so long ago still made the room feel so alive.

But what impacted me the most actually wasn’t the painting.

It was what I found on the back wall…

A series of photographs of the piece as it was being created. From its earliest sketches to its final form.

And what struck me was how ordinary some of those early stages looked.

Yet there they were. Hanging in one of the world’s greatest museums.

On one wall was a masterpiece…

On the other wall were photos proving it wasn’t always a masterpiece.

And somewhere between those two walls I stood physically and metaphorically.

You see, I’ve been building a lot of things lately.

A YouTube channel. A newsletter. A community for creative people around the world.

And sometimes I catch myself looking at what exists today and feeling disappointed that it doesn’t resemble what I see in my imagination yet.

And I start questioning myself as I stand between where I am and where I hope to be.

If you’ve felt something similar, here’s what I learned in the presence of Picasso’s greatness….

If I’d seen Picasso’s earliest sketches without knowing what they would become, would I have recognized their potential?

Honestly, probably not.

The finished painting gave those sketches a meaning they didn’t possess on their own.

And that’s one of the key advantages we have when studying the lives of great creators.

We get to see their beginnings through the eyes of someone who already knows their endings.

But unfortunately we don’t have that luxury with our own work.

We have to make things without knowing what they’ll become.

We have to believe in possibilities we can’t even see yet.

And sometimes, we have to continue creating while standing in front of something that looks nothing like what we imagined.

But here’s the thing about the creative process that I wish I knew a long time ago.

The version we imagine is never the version we actually create.

Those photographs on the back wall didn’t simply show Picasso adding more and more paint until the painting was finished.

They showed him changing his mind. Moving things around. Removing things.

Trying something, seeing what it revealed, and making another decision.

And that’s the purpose of every step of the creative process.

Instead of being a smaller version of the vision in our head, it’s meant to reveal what that vision needs.

A sketch isn’t a failed painting.

It’s a way of discovering a painting.

A rough draft isn’t a failed book.

It’s a way of discovering what the book is trying to say.

An early creative project is never a failed vision.

It’s a conversation with what vision needs from us to be brought to life.

And so this changes the relationship we have to our unfinished work.

Instead of asking, “Is this as good as I imagined?”

Now ask, “What has this taught me that I couldn’t have known before I made it?”

Because progress lives in that creative dance between what’s made and the Maker.

In the quality of the decisions we are becoming capable of making.

The sentence we remove.

The scene we realize doesn’t belong.

The audience we understand a little better.

The idea we finally know how to express.

Sometimes progress looks like adding something.

Sometimes it looks like starting over.

And sometimes it looks like realizing that the thing you’ve been trying so hard to make isn’t the thing you actually want to make at all.

Your masterpiece is hidden in the potential unraveled during the creative process.

The work doesn’t just become clearer as we create.

We become clearer through creating it.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

The same sound. The same breath. The same movement. The same thought.

Again. And again. And again.

Nothing new to see. Nothing new to learn. Nothing to look forward to.

You couldn’t grow. You couldn’t discover. You couldn’t become anything other than who you were in that second.

It’d be torture.

You’d be conscious, but not really living.

You’d be the living dead.

Now…let’s make that second an hour.

You wake up. Brush your teeth. Make breakfast. Check your phone. Have a conversation. Do a little work. And then, just as you’re settling into the morning, everything resets.

At first, it might not be so bad.

You could enjoy your favorite breakfast and find comfort in knowing exactly what comes next.

But eventually, even your favorite breakfast would become unbearable. The conversation would lose its meaning. The things you once enjoyed would become reminders that nothing would ever change.

And once again, you’d find yourself feeling like the living dead.

I’m writing this today because I think there might be someone reading this who’s trapped in a time loop.

And I’d like to offer them a key.

Maybe you’re not repeating the same second or hour.

But perhaps you’re repeating the same day. The same week. The same year.

You wake up. Get ready. Go to work. Come home. Eat dinner. Scroll through your phone. Watch something. Go to sleep.

Then you do it again.

Monday becomes Friday. Friday becomes Monday. The weeks become months, and before you know it, another year has passed.

And the strangest part…

Is we call this normal.

We’ve built a society where it’s remarkably easy to spend an entire life following a schedule we never consciously chose.

From childhood, we’re taught when to wake up, where to go, what to learn, how to behave, and what success is supposed to look like.

Eventually, the school bell becomes the work calendar. The homework becomes the deadlines. The report card becomes the performance review.

And somewhere along the way, we become so occupied with doing what’s expected of us that we stop asking what we actually want to do.

Our days get packed with obligations. Our free moments get swallowed by distractions. And the little time we have left for ourselves is often spent recovering from everything else.

But here’s something I want you to remember.

Your life is still yours.

Maybe you can’t control every hour of your day. Maybe you have children to raise, bills to pay, and people depending on you.

These roles are honorable.

I understand that…

I’m not suggesting you quit your job, abandon your responsibilities, or move to a cabin in the mountains (unless that’s something you’ve been considering).

I’m suggesting something much smaller.

And perhaps much more powerful.

To live is to change our looping time.

Think about it.

Everything that’s alive is in a constant state of becoming.

A tree grows new branches. A river carves new paths. Your body replaces old cells.

And yet, And yet, it’s so easy for us to treat our lives as something we’re supposed to maintain rather than something we’re allowed to continually create.

We stop exploring. Stop experimenting. Stop following the strange little curiosities that once made life feel grand.

We begin mistaking familiarity for fulfillment.

But I don’t think the answer is to constantly chase excitement or abandon every routine.

Some of the most beautiful things in life are built through repetition.

Love. Mastery. Friendship. Art.

The problem isn’t repetition. It’s repetition without intention.

And that’s the key I wanted to offer you today…

Intention.

Intentionally set aside time to follow your untamed curiosity.

Intentionally learn something simply because it fascinates you.

Intentionally go somewhere you’ve never been. Have a conversation with someone whose life looks nothing like yours.

Pick up the instrument you’ve always wanted to learn.

Open the notebook. Make the painting. Write the story.

Begin that project you’ve been carrying around in your imagination for years.

It doesn’t even have to make money or impress anyone. Who knows where it’ll lead?

Just do it because you’re curious to discover who you might become along the way.

And you don’t have to change your entire life today.

Sometimes all it takes is one hour that completely belongs to you.

One hour where you’re not following someone else’s instructions, meeting someone else’s expectations, or consuming something someone else created.

One hour where you get to be the author of what happens next.

Creativity gifts us the ability to keep becoming someone new.

To feel alive.

So if your life has begun to feel like a loop, I hope you’ll find a small way to interrupt it today.

Follow the curiosity.

Begin the project.

Open a door you’ve never opened before.

You don’t need an entirely new life to feel alive again.

Sometimes you just need to stop living the old one on repeat.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

The part that works so hard to make something beautiful, only to have it undervalued.

It’s a strange kind of pain.

Because people see the finished work.

They don’t see the countless versions you threw away. The years you spent learning. The late nights spent getting it “right”.

They see what you made. But they don’t see what it took to make you capable of making it.

And sometimes, what hurts most isn’t the criticism.

It’s how easily people dismiss something that took so much of you.

When you love what you do, people seem to assume it must be easy.

They see you smiling while you work. How naturally you move through your process. The joy it brings you.

And somehow, they mistake all that joy for a lack of effort.

As if something can’t be both difficult and deeply fulfilling.

As if loving the work somehow makes it less like work.

Yet, that’s also one of the beautiful things about being an artist. We can spend years struggling to learn something, and still wake up excited to do it again.

Just because we love carrying something doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.

And it can be so exhausting giving something your all, only to be met with a list of everything it’s missing.

Especially when the expectations seem to contradict each other.

The world will ask you to make something new, then reject what they don’t recognize.

They want your work to feel priceless, but they want it cheap.

They tell you to make what you love, then ask why you aren’t making what sells.

And too much of that noise can make us lose sight of why we started creating in the first place.

So I want to remind you of something…

Your effort is real whether or not anyone saw it.

Honestly, I wish I could've been there to witness it all.

To watch you dance in the flow state.

But between you and me…

I didn’t have to see it all for me to know and respect that grueling creative process you’ve traveled through.

I know the hours happened.

The failed attempts happened.

The courage it took to try again and again happened.

And all of those invisible moments live inside the work you make today.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want recognition.

We all want to feel seen. Especially by the people we care about.

And it doesn’t mean every criticism is wrong.

Sometimes people can see something in our work that we can’t.

But their judgment of what you’ve made is not a judgment of what you’re worth.

So don’t spend your whole creative life trying to satisfy the world’s evolving expectations.

Decide what you’re making. Decide why it matters to you. And keep returning to that reason.

Because at the end of the day…

The only person who has witnessed every single moment of your creative journey is you.

You were there for all of it.

Promise me you’ll give yourself credit.

Because the mountain isn’t smaller just because nobody saw you climb it.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

Before they say a single line, they spend hours building an entire life for their character.

Their childhood. Their first heartbreak. Their desires. Their deepest fears. Their insecurities.

A mountain of information about a person who doesn’t even exist.

And almost none of it is even in the script.

The acting pioneer Konstantin Stanislavski taught actors to develop this inner life because he understood something fascinating about human behavior.

Everything we do has a history behind it.

We might watch a character say, “I’m fine.”

But behind those two words is an entire life the actor imagines.

Those words could communicate anger, grief, shame, or genuine happiness.

The smallest gestures reveal a world beneath the surface.

And I think this is what makes art so extraordinary.

Creation is a transfer of knowledge from complexity to understanding.

A musician takes years of experiences, emotions, memories, and ideas and condenses them into a short song.

A painter takes something that may be impossible to explain in words and expresses it through shapes and colors.

A writer condenses a lifetime of discoveries into a few hundred pages.

We, the artists, become vessels for understanding.

But this week, I’ve been thinking about the other side of this exchange…

If creation is the act of communicating something complex, then art appreciation is the act of considering that complexity.

Taking the time to understand it.

When you admire a painting, you recognize that what you’re seeing is only the surface of something so much deeper.

You consider the artist’s intentions. Their influences. Their experiences. And the countless decisions that led to the final piece.

Even when you don’t fully understand the work, you recognize that there’s something there to understand.

Art appreciation is consideration.

And that brings me to something I’ve been thinking about lately.

Even these notes on creativity are shaped by everything I've lived through.

My life refracted into a few words.

You don’t see the little boy who grew up surrounded by artists. You don’t see the identity of being an artist I carried to eleven different schools. You don’t see the years I spent studying creators, trying to understand what made their minds work differently.

And there are so many other parts of my life that I’ve never put into words.

Experiences that changed the way I see the world. Things I’ve learned from people I’ve lost. Beliefs I’ve grown out of. Questions I’m still trying to answer.

Yet, it’s all here…

All of those experiences, and thousands more, have somehow led to this moment, where I’m sitting here writing these sentences to you.

And if I were to write them again tomorrow, they might be different.

Because tomorrow, I’ll be a slightly different person.

Which brings me back to Stanislavski…

That inner life he was teaching actors to create isn’t an invention of fiction. It’s an imitation of how every human being actually works.

Every person you meet has been shaped by years of experiences, relationships, memories, and decisions.

And no matter how long you’ve known someone, you’ll never know all of them.

Leonardo da Vinci once wrote that great love comes from great understanding of the thing we love.

I love that idea because it suggests that our capacity to love something grows as we understand it more deeply.

And it makes me wonder...

Why is it that we can spend hours appreciating the complexity of a fictional character, but sometimes fail to offer that same consideration to the real people around us?

We meet someone, notice something about their appearance, their race, their religion, their sexuality, their accent, or the way they live, and suddenly we think we know something about who they are.

Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

We’ve inherited so many ideas about people from our families, our communities, the media, and the world around us that we can mistake an assumption for an observation.

And before that person has even had the opportunity to show us who they are, we’ve already formed an opinion about them.

I think this is one of the most painful parts of discrimination.

It blinds all of us to the beauty in the strangers all around us.

Imagine spending your whole life becoming who you are, only for someone to judge you by one thing about you.

Reducing your existence to a single characteristic.

All the things you’ve experienced, the people you’ve loved, the things you’ve overcome, the dreams you’re chasing, the knowledge you’ve gained, the person you’re trying to become.

And none of it is considered…

Instead, someone has taken a tiny fragment of your identity and used it to decide how much respect, trust, or opportunity you deserve.

And when enough people do this, those assumptions can become the rules and systems that shape people’s lives.

I wonder how much of the division in our world comes from thinking we know people when we really don't.

Because the truth is, we don’t have to understand someone’s entire life to recognize that there’s an entire life to understand.

That’s what art appreciation has to offer us.

A person shouldn’t have to prove they’re interesting, talented, kind, or worthy of appreciation before they’re treated fairly.

When we look at art, we assume there’s more to it than what meets the eye.

What if we approached people with that same curiosity?

Not assuming that we already know who they are, but considering how much we don’t know.

How much more understanding would we have?

And how much more love?

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

Before Cubism, artists usually painted people from one point of view. But artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began showing the same person from many angles, all on one canvas.

An eye from the front. A nose from the side. A face broken into pieces.

And somehow…

In all that distortion…

Something beautiful appeared.

And I’ve been thinking about why that even happens.

If you’ve ever spent hours painting someone, you know what I mean…

You start with a sketch. You study the shape of their face.

You erase. You look again.

You zero in on how the light falls on their skin.

The curve of their nose. Their cheeks. Their lips.

You notice all the little things you would’ve missed if you hadn’t stopped to look.

And then something strange happens…

The longer you look, the more beautiful they become.

It doesn’t matter if they fit the world’s idea of beauty. After hours of studying their face, you begin to see something those standards could never measure.

And that’s what fascinates me…

They didn’t become more beautiful.

You became more capable of seeing their beauty.

Nothing about their face changed. The only thing that changed was how much attention you gave it.

I’ve realized we’re not making them into a work of art.

We’re discovering that they already are a work of art.

The word “behold” means to see, look at, or observe something with deep attention and focus.

And that’s a part of what makes being an artist such a joy.

We are practicing the act of beholding.

Creating forces us to slow down long enough to see what a passing glance would miss.

Because beauty doesn’t always reveal itself at first sight.

Sometimes it takes hours of looking. Sometimes it takes studying every angle. Sometimes it takes getting close enough to notice the things you thought were flaws.

And as artists, we spend so much of our lives giving that kind of attention to other people.

We write songs about them. We paint their faces. We tell their stories.

We’re so used to holding the brush that we forget what it’s like to be the subject.

But what would happen if we gave ourselves the same attention we give our art?

Not a quick glance in the mirror. Not another judgment about what we like or don’t like.

I mean the kind of attention that makes us curious instead of critical.

The kind that looks again when something doesn’t make sense.

The kind that doesn’t turn away when it finds something imperfect.

And that’s why I want to challenge you this week to make something about yourself.

A melody that sounds like the feelings you can’t explain.

A drawing that holds the parts of you nobody gets to see.

A poem that gives a voice to the person you’ve been afraid to become.

And as you create it, take your time.

Study yourself the way you would study someone you love.

Notice your strange angles. Your contradictions. Your unfinished parts. The things you love about yourself and the things you’re still learning to love.

Don’t rush to make something beautiful.

Just pay attention.

Because that’s what I find so beautiful about Cubism.

It reminds me that there’s more to a person than any single point of view can show us.

And showcasing every angle is what reveals the beauty.

And the same is true of all of us.

We spend so much time looking at ourselves through the world’s eyes that sometimes we forget to have our own.

You’re the one holding the brush. And you’re the subject.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So behold the magnificence of all you are.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

⚠️ This is a preview of one of the 49 Keys of Creativity from my monthly paid newsletter. Every month I write and share a new chapter from a never-ending book on unlocking your creative potential. Enjoy the free preview below.

THE IMPATIENT CHILD

In 1943, Edwin Land took a picture of his three-year-old daughter, Jennifer, while their family was on vacation. She looked at the camera, then looked at her father, and asked a question that should have sounded ridiculous at the time:

Why could she not see the picture right now?

Photography required waiting. Film had to leave the camera, enter a darkroom, pass through chemicals, dry, and return as an image. That delay was not seen as a design flaw. It was simply how photography worked. Jennifer didn’t know enough to see that limitation.

Land went for a walk with her question haunting him. By the time he returned, he had mentally worked through the foundations of an instant photographic system. A few years later, he demonstrated the technology that became the Polaroid Land Camera.

The invention began before the chemistry, patents, factories, and cameras. It began when a child looked at a gap between desire and reality and didn’t call it normal.

That’s original thinking.

THE MISSING OBJECT

Most people look at the world and see objects. Original thinkers also see missing objects.

They notice the empty space between what people want and what reality currently provides. They notice when a sentence begins with, “I wish there were...” They feel irritation where everyone else has developed tolerance. They encounter a slow process, awkward ritual, unfair assumption, boring genre, or unnecessary rule and wonder why it still exists.

The difficult part is that “missing” things are invisible. You can’t point to a nonexistent product on a shelf. You can’t study a movement that hasn’t started yet. You can’t get feedback on an art style someone never experienced.

Original thinking is like faith. It requires you to treat absence as evidence.

Look around your life. Somewhere in your day to day, you’re repeatedly dealing with the pain of a missing object. You tape two tools together. You maintain an ugly spreadsheet. You explain the same confusing idea every week. You search for a song, book, product, service, or community that feels as if it should exist, but doesn’t.

Those annoyances are windows into originality.

THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE

Originality is often misunderstood as pulling an idea from a supernatural void. In reality, most breakthroughs live one door beyond what is already possible.

Read more

A deck of cards?

A refrigerator?

A skyscraper?

Not even close.

Fifty folds would put you somewhere in the neighborhood of the distance from Earth to the Sun.

And if you ambitiously folded it 103 times it would be as thick as the observable universe!

I know…

That sounds unfathomable.

But the math is simple.

Since humans project the future in straight lines, we have a hard time comprehending the scale of compounding effects.

Multiplying over and over again.

Every fold doubles the thickness.

One sheet becomes two.

Two becomes four.

Four becomes eight.

And for a long time, while folding, nothing looks particularly impressive to our straight-line-brains.

After ten folds, we’d still be holding something we could wrap our head around.

But then the numbers start getting more and more ridiculous.

That’s the strange thing about compounding:

the beginning looks nothing like the ending.

And I think this is why it’s so easy to quit too early.

We write for a month and still don’t feel like a writer.

We practice guitar and still stumble through the chord changes.

We publish ten videos and almost nobody watches.

We work on the business and it still looks like an idea held together with tape.

So we can’t help but wonder:

Is this actually working?

But you’re staring at fold number seven and judging it for not looking like fold number fifty.

Creative work compounds in ways that are almost impossible to see while they’re happening.

Every sentence teaches you how to write the next.

Every ugly creation sharpens your taste.

Every conversation makes you slightly better at pitching the thing you’re building.

Every time you return to the work when you could have abandoned it, you invest in yourself.

An investment so small you barely even notice it.

An hour spent learning.

Another attempt.

A step forward.

But everything you want is on the other side of patience, consistency and intention.

Another fold.

Folding you more and more into a person you can’t even recognize.

And the magic happens slowly, then all at once…

One day you’re painfully pushing keys with one finger on a piano.

The next day, your hands seem to just know where to go.

One day you’re staring at a blank document wondering how anyone writes a book.

The next day, you’re holding one.

From the outside, it can look sudden.

But most breakthroughs are just compounding effects of investing in yourself.

All of your private repetitions finally becoming visible.

The applause happens at fold fifty.

The person was built during folds one through forty-nine.

So how are you investing in yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, creatively?

And don’t say you’re not, because everyone is.

We are always compounding something.

Writing the chapter is a choice.

Not writing it is also a choice.

Practicing compounds.

Avoiding practice compounds.

Courage compounds.

So does hesitation.

Money compounds.

So does neglect.

Love compounds too.

A relationship is built from a thousand almost invisible moments.

Life is built from moments too small to look like a life.

Our future doesn’t suddenly arrive.

It accumulates.

Indecision accumulates a future where your dreams remain unmanifested.

Intention accumulates a future where you aimed for the moon and reached the Sun.

So look at the thing you say you want out of life.

The book.

The business.

The stronger body.

The deeper friendship.

Don’t even think about fold number fifty for a moment.

Just focus on what’s the next fold?

Write 300 words.

Build for an hour.

Go for a short run.

Tell them why you love them.

Then come back tomorrow and fold it again.

And again.

Until who you are is unfathomable.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

Being dropped is someone else letting go of you.

Falling is you letting go of yourself.

Dropped is abandonment. Falling is trust.

Last night I couldn’t sleep because a question was on my mind:

Why do we use the word “falling” for some of our most out-of-body experiences?

Falling asleep. Falling in love. Falling into a rhythm. Falling into a flow state.

Falling is how we describe the things that happen to us instead of things we do.

A gravity we can’t escape. Gravity always wins.

And so falling lacks intention.

You can’t plan to fall. Bracing yourself defeats the purpose.

Trying hard to fall asleep is one of the most reliable ways to stay awake.

We can craft conditions for the flow state but we can’t command it.

And don’t even let me get started on “trying” to fall in love with someone.

To fall we must surrender. But the beautiful thing is that…

We don’t just fall, we fall into.

Into sleep. Into love. Into flow. Into a rhythm.

These states hug us.

Once you’re in love or in flow, you’re held gently by them.

The falling is only scary for a moment.

Then, before you know it, you’re existing all wrapped up somewhere else.

I can’t remember the exact moment I fell in love.

There was just a day I realized I was yearning for her presence while the ground was already far above my head.

Or even when I write these emails. I ramble on and on and on until I disappear.

Then one distant moment later I’m deep into my playlist and the light has moved across the room.

When I zoom out I feel closer to understanding what’s happening here…

The moon has been falling toward the Earth for billions of years.

It simply keeps missing, moving forward just enough that the ground curves away beneath it.

That’s all an orbit is. A fall that never lands.

Maybe a love that lasts is like that.

Not a single drop, but a continuous falling toward someone.

Held in motion by the fact that you’re both still moving in tandem.

Or maybe even flow works like that too.

Not a single plunge into the work, but a continuous falling toward it.

Held in motion because the work keeps moving too.

Every time your hands catch up, the next problem curves just out of reach.

Move too slowly, it’s too easy, and you crash into the work.

Move too fast, it’s too hard, and you’re flung out of orbit.

Flow lives in that seamless dance where you’re always falling and never arriving.

Where the next sentence, the next note, the next brushstroke stays exactly one step ahead of you.

Falling. And falling. And falling.

Into bliss. Into dreams. Into an infinite now.

Some of the most beautiful moments in life aren’t witnessed.

They’re doors we only ever find out we’ve walked through.

An environment we feel but never remember.

These moments aren’t meant to be conquered.

They are meant to be entered.

And the only way to get there…

is by leaving the ground behind…

and trusting the distance between letting go and being held.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

At some point in our creative journey, we’re going to come face to face with a wall.

Our music streams will plateau.

Our follower count will stop growing like it used to.

Our views will stall.

Our sales won’t be enough to sustain the life we’re trying to build.

And the frustrating part is…

we can still see the vision on the other side.

We can see the life we want.

The work we want to make.

The people we want to reach.

The mountain we’ve been climbing is still there…

But it continues on the other side of some unexpected wall.

And that wall can feel like impending doom.

It can make us wonder if this is where the journey ends.

It can make us question our own talent. Our judgment. Our ability. Our choices.

Even if we were ever good enough from the start.

But the wall is not the end.

It’s a puzzle.

And usually, we can’t solve a new puzzle with the same thinking that solved the old one.

That’s what makes this part of the journey so uncomfortable.

The things that got us here may not be the things that get us over there.

Something has to change.

Not the dream. Not even the work.

But the system surrounding it all.

Maybe it’s our positioning, storytelling, distribution, consistency, collaborations, niche, product, pricing, business model…or so much more.

Something that once worked has reached its limit.

And now our job is to figure out what comes next.

That requires experiments.

Lots of them.

Some will work.

Most won’t.

And that’s where things get dangerous.

Because when enough experiments fail, it becomes very easy to turn a strategic problem into an existential one.

That voice that spoke to us at the beginning of the journey….

the voice that almost convinced us not to take this journey in the first place…

is back with a vengeance.

“Maybe nobody cares about what I make. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe the dream was stupid.”

But when our back is against the wall, I think there’s a question worth asking:

“If this takes much longer than I hoped, is the vision still worth pursuing?”

Because I feel like if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer will be yes.

And if so, something changes.

It opens us so we can care intensely about commercial success without making commercial success the reason we continue.

Once we separate those two things, we can see the problem much more clearly.

Streams plateauing is not an existential crisis.

It’s a problem to understand.

Sales slowing down isn’t proof the dream is dead.

It’s data.

Views falling aren’t about our worth.

They’re feedback.

So we experiment. Something fails. We learn. We change something. And we run another experiment.

Again and again.

The dream remains stable while the strategy becomes extremely flexible.

Thomas Edison was fixed on practical electric light while changing materials, designs, and entire systems until it worked.

Walt Disney kept chasing immersive storytelling while moving from cartoons to feature films, television, and theme parks.

Pablo Picasso never stopped trying to find new ways to see even though he abandoned one visual language after another to do it.

As creators, we must be stubborn about the destination and flexible about the route.

So when you reach the wall…

don’t mistake it for a sign that you’ve gone too far.

Sometimes the wall is just telling you that you’ve made it farther than the version of you who started ever knew how to go.

That’s something to be proud of!

You are not standing in front of the end.

You are standing in front of the next version of yourself.

The version of you who knows how to solve bigger problems.

Who knows how to adapt.

Who knows how to create new paths when the old ones disappear.

Who knows how to keep the vision alive.

I promise you…

The fact that you’re reading this message shows me you’re a lifelong learner committed to growth.

You can learn. You can change. You can ask better questions.

You can try a hundred bad experiments until one finally opens a door.

You can become someone today that you didn’t even know you needed to be yesterday.

That’s our superpower.

The wall is fixed.

We are not.

So build the ladder.

Build the stairs.

Throw the rope.

Dig underneath it.

Walk around it.

Invent something nobody has tried before.

But do not confuse “I don’t know how yet” with “I can’t.”

Your vision can remain the same.

Your strategy can change a thousand times.

And as long as you are still willing to learn, adapt, and create…

there are more ways forward than you can currently imagine.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

P.S. If this sparked something for you, you can buy me a coffee here.​

But I think creativity requires us to lose our mind.

Not our intelligence or sanity.

But the part of us that narrates, judges, compares, and anticipates criticism.

I feel most creative when I’m completely lost in the work.

So deep inside of it that I don’t even realize I was lost until I return.

Completely changed. Observing my experience in hindsight.

And right now, I’m writing this note fresh out of one of those journeys through nothingness.

And I’m returning to reality carrying this idea:

“Creativity requires us to lose our mind because our mind is often the thing standing between us and the work.”

The most creative parts of us deeply yearns to become absorbed in the act itself.

But the mind keeps interrupting it:

How am I coming across? Is this good? What will people think?

I thought creativity only came from expressing the self.

But maybe our best creativity emerges when we temporarily forget the self.

An ego disappearance.

A brief period where there is no “me making something.”

There is only the making.

Flow is one version of this. Time disappears. The world goes quiet. And you become almost indistinguishable from what you’re doing.

A peak example a jazz pianist.

They can’t know and discover at the same time.

Discovery requires giving up the need to know where you’re going.

And some of life’s most beautiful moments happen the same way.

When we’re laughing so hard we forget how we look.

When we’re holding someone we love and forget where we end and they begin.

When we’re playing like a child, dancing without watching ourself dance, or watching a sunset without reaching for our phone.

For a moment, the person we spend our whole life trying to become disappears.

And somehow we just feel more alive.

Yet we spend so much time building a “self”.

Protecting it. Improving it. Proving it.

But life seems to open widest in the moments we forget to protect the person experiencing it.

Art is a great way of practicing the act of disappearing long enough to actually be here.

Because when a creator becomes “one” with “more”, they can make magic.

Unfortunately, many of us keep that magic boxed inside the ego.

But creativity is like the Genie in the story Aladdin.

The Genie is only magical when he isn’t bottled up.

Creativity isn’t about manufacturing something impressive for the world to see.

It’s about removing the psychological cage that prevents something already alive inside you from expressing itself.

Escaping your bottle.

Losing your mind.

And making magic.

Stay creative,

Way

The right idea.

The right color.

The right word.

The right melody.

In the creative process, it’s as if we want certainty before commitment.

But our work typically reveals itself when we have the courage to walk up to the door and enter it.

We can’t think our way into a painting we haven’t painted.

We can’t edit a sentence we refuse to write.

We can’t adjust a note we never play.

Sometimes the next step is hidden because the current step hasn’t happened yet.

The road on our creative journey only appears after we start walking.

While I’m writing these notes on creativity, I decide what sentence to write next…

And with every new sentence, the entire message changes.

And so every sentence creates a problem.

A tension I need to resolve.

But that problem creates another decision.

And that decision creates another problem.

Eventually, there is a complete note I’m proud to share with you.

We call our finished things a “masterpiece.”

But while it was being made, it was mostly a series of problems.

Great work is just a beautiful history of solved mistakes.

And so our best work isn’t about knowing exactly what to do, when to do it.

It’s embracing whatever happens and trusting ourself to work with it.

That’s creative confidence in its purest form.

To create one thing, you must kill a thousand possibilities.

The first sentence kills every book that could’ve started differently.

The first note kills every song that could’ve sounded like something else.

The first brushstroke destroys the perfect blank canvas forever.

Creation is not only addition.

Creation is the courage to exclude.

Every yes is surrounded by thousands of quiet no’s.

And sometimes we’re so distracted grieving everything we didn’t choose that we ignore the beauty and potential in the choices we’ve made.

So make the choice. And then make the best of it.

In art and in life, I’m starting to believe that wisdom isn’t always knowing which road leads to the best outcome.

Wisdom may be understanding that no road is ever complete.

We participate in what the road becomes.

We choose the person. Then we learn how to love.

We choose the craft. Then we give decades to it.

We choose the city. Then we build a home there.

We choose the idea. Then we keep returning until it’s brought to life.

And so identify the single action that will get the ball rolling.

Take that first step.

Because every meaningful life contains a leap.

A brush stroke. A sentence.

A proposal. A resignation.

A plane ticket. A dream.

A frightening yes. A necessary no.

An end. A beginning.

If you feel a calling echoing deep in your soul…

Answer it.

You do not need to know that every decision is the best.

You need enough courage to find out what happens if you give it your all.

And one day, you will look behind you and see something you could never have planned.

A body of work.

A friendship.

A family.

A life.

Beauty built from hundreds of unsure decisions.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

JACKSON POLLOCK

Jackson Pollock pioneered an art movement known as “action painting.” He developed a technique called drip painting, where he poured and splattered paint onto large canvases, often laid on the floor. Although some may glance at Pollock’s artwork and wonder why it fetches hundreds of millions of dollars, criticizing it as mere paint splatters, the essence of his creative brilliance requires a glimpse into the records of art history.

Art history began with humans drawing their observations on walls, capturing the world around them. Over time, our repertoire of drawing techniques expanded, and we invented various mediums to create more realistic art. Concepts such as perspective, proportion, and reflection aided in accurately depicting the world’s essence on canvases. However, there came a turning point when artists like Monet defied conventional norms. Breaking free from the shackles of realism, Monet employed rough, expressive brushstrokes and vibrant, invigorating hues to portray landscapes, people, and other subjects. That’s when technology threw the art world a curveball with the invention of the camera. The camera eliminated the need for art to look real. What’s the point of posing for hours to get a realistic portrait painted when someone could just take a quicker even more realistic photo? In light of this, artists like Picasso challenged the status quo. He pondered, “What if I ignore the laws of perspective, leaving that to cameras, and instead paint a subject from multiple angles?”. This sparked the birth of distorted art forms, expanding the horizons of artistic expression.

Here’s when Jackson Pollock arrived. With audaciousness and unpredictability, Pollock posed a profound question: What if I create art that isn’t of anything, free from any subject or representation? He discarded the idea of using any subject at all and, instead, painted paintings and nothing else. It only represented itself. This was the ultimate act of rebellion, not just against an art movement but against art history itself. That’s what made him a genius.

Through relentless mastery of his craft, he defied conventional thinking and forged new techniques along the way. Do not be deceived by the seemingly simplistic nature of his paintings; his art is not easy to create. They required him to exert a painstaking amount of energy and emotion to create paintings so unique that they are nearly impossible to replicate. He created dynamic and spontaneous compositions emphasizing the physical act of painting itself. Pollock’s novel techniques and the absence of a recognizable subject have had a lasting impact on contemporary art. Since then, artists have broken free from the chains of subjectivity, creating art for the sheer sake of creation, owing their liberation to Jackson Pollock.

LEARN THE RULES BEFORE YOU BREAK THEM

Even though Jackson Pollock is famous for developing a groundbreaking abstract style of art, many people don’t know that he was proficient in painting realism. He received formal art training and mastered all the traditional techniques, just like all of his artsy peers. By perfecting the methods of the great artists before his time, Pollock elevated to creating art ahead of his time. He learned the fundamentals so that he could intelligently question them.

Creators of the past laid the fundamental groundwork to master your craft. If you go to art school, they’re going to help you rewire how you see the world. At dance school, you’ll learn how to cultivate strong body awareness and control. In film school, professors will stress the importance of framing and composition. By mastering the rules, you’ll become proficient and knowledgeable in all the time-tested conventional techniques, frameworks, and traditions. However, to transcend conventional boundaries and explore new frontiers, you have to break those rules. This will unleash true artistic freedom, innovation, and creative thinking.

Don’t rush this process by trying to break the rules prematurely. You’ll only end up falling short of your true potential. If you break the wrong rules, nobody will notice

Read more

So I’ve been taking an Anthropology 101 lecture series while reading The Art of Being Human by Michael Wesch.

And I came across a paragraph I haven’t been able to get out of my head.

Wesch wrote:

“The art of seeing can be broken up into four parts. First, we have to see our own seeing—that is, see how we see the world, recognizing our own taken-for-granted assumptions, and be able to set them aside. Second, we have to “see big,” to see the larger cultural, social, economic, historical, and political forces that shape our everyday lives. Third, we have to “see small,” paying close attention to the smallest details and understanding their significance. And finally, we have to “see it all,” piecing all of this together to see how everything we can see interacts from a holistic point of view.”

I read that and immediately thought:

This isn’t only anthropology.

This is creativity.

The more I study great creators, the less I think creativity begins with making and the more I think it begins with seeing.

Perception.

Artists improve as they learn to see more of the world.

Art of seeing = See your own seeing + See big + See small + See it all.

And Wesch’s four ways of seeing gave me a formula for how that happens.

1: See your own seeing

Before you can see the world differently, you have to notice the lens you’re already looking through.

We have ideas about what good art looks like.

What serious writing sounds like.

What music is cool.

But where did those rules come from?

Most were handed to us.

By a teacher. A parent. A critic. An algorithm. A genre. A trend. An industry.

We’ve spent our lives collecting all these ways of seeing.

And eventually those ways of seeing stopped feeling learned. They started feeling true.

That’s the trap. And there’s only one way out…

We have to become capable of stepping outside our view. Even just for a moment.

And asking: What would I make if I stopped assuming this had to be made the way I currently think it should be made?

2: See big

Then Wesch said we have to learn to see the larger forces shaping our lives.

All that history. Culture. Economics. Technology. Politics. Institutions.

And for an artist, this means realizing that no piece of work just randomly appears out of nowhere.

We’re creating inside a giant conversation that started long before we were born.

So a musician who makes a song today isn’t only working with melody and rhythm like ancient tribes were.

They’re also working inside global streaming economics. TikTok loops. Music production bedroom-setups. Sampling. Auto-tune. A century of recorded music. Thousands of musical traditions.

That entire world sits invisibly inside whatever song they create.

The same is true for every kind creator across any domain.

And once you start seeing those forces, context becomes a creative collaborator.

We can start asking better questions about why we create.

A big aspect of originality is understanding the conversation between these forces well enough to say something the conversation hasn’t heard before.

Once you see the water everyone’s swimming in.

Suddenly…the water becomes a medium too.

3: See small

I talk about this a lot, but it’s so true…

Creators notice things.

Almost invisible things.

Like the path to a seemingly impossible future.

The melody in a car’s ticking blinker.

The picture-perfect millisecond.

Most people pass right through those moments.

The artist stops.

But what happens when you stop is important. Your level of attention matters.

Beginners often create from categories.

Loneliness. Love. Anger. Beauty. Loss.

But those are enormous words that hold a lot of attention.

A seasoned artist keeps looking until the category becomes a moment.

Loneliness becomes the second toothbrush still sitting beside the sink.

Grief becomes updating your phone’s wallpaper to honor their memory.

Love becomes noticing they’re cold before they say they are.

You would think the more specific something becomes, the fewer people would relate to it.

But the opposite happens…

The more precise the observation, the more human it feels.

So instead of asking: What is happening?

The artist learns to ask: Exactly what is happening?

“Exactly”…that one word changes everything.

4: See it all

And then comes the part I find most interesting.

We put everything together.

We see our own seeing.

We see big.

We see small.

And then we begin noticing relationships between them.

Our inner world.

The outer world.

And the tiny details sitting between the two.

This is where something abstract starts becoming art.

Let’s jump into the mind of an artist for a moment….

Imagine a photographer on a train who notices people staring at their phones.

Seeing small notices their bent necks. The light from the screen bouncing off their faces. The thumbs moving instinctively. The people six inches away from each other who might as well be six miles away.

Then seeing big notices smartphones. Social media. Attention economics. Urban life. Changing public space. Shifting human connection. A world where we can reach almost anyone while barely looking at the person beside us.

Then seeing their own seeing asks: Why does this bother me? What do I believe connection is supposed to look like?

And with the snap of a photo…all of those ways of seeing come together as a larger question appears:

“Can we be connected to everyone and present with no one?”

Now the photographer has something more than a photograph of a group of people holding their phones.

They have a question about being alive right now.

They have a point of view.

They have a photo capturing a worldview.

And that level of attention is beautiful to witness because it’s an act of love.

Think about it…

To really see someone is to notice the small things they thought no one noticed. To understand the larger world and life that shaped them. To question the assumptions you’ve placed on them. And then, somehow, to hold all of it at once.

Being able to look at another human being in their impossible complexity and say, “There you are. I see you.” brings us closer.

Because someone paid enough attention long enough to discover who was actually there.

Seeing is powerful because it’s impactful.

Creativity is more a perception problem than an idea problem.

Before you can make something you’ve never made before, you may need to see something you’ve never seen before.

A contradiction. A pattern. A strange detail. A cultural shift.

The world is overflowing with inspiration to work with.

But you can only create from what you’re capable of perceiving.

If you see the same things everyone else sees, through the same assumptions, at the same level of detail, you’ll probably keep arriving at familiar ideas.

But change how you see, and suddenly there are questions everywhere.

Tensions. Metaphors. Stories. Possibilities.

Everything everywhere is extraordinary.

Maybe the world doesn’t need to become more interesting.

Maybe we just need to become more interested.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

I’m tempted to create a playlist, rent a dance studio for a few hours, and just let my body take over.

The kind of dancing where you stop thinking about how you look.

Because when your body is moving and your heart’s racing and your blood’s flowing…

You can’t help but feel alive.

And when I think about the life that moves through the body.

I’m reminded that our souls dance too.

Your joy. Your curiosity. Your envy. Your boredom. Your longing. Your restlessness. Your resistance.

They’re all movements

It’s the rhythm of your life humming clues.

What melody drains you?

What melody gives your soul the energy to dance?

I remember watching a nature documentary and learning something fascinating about honeybees.

When a honeybee colony needs a new home, a handful of bees fly in opposite directions to scout locations.

After each of them finds one they love they all come back to the colony and have a dance-off.

A better location gets a longer, harder dance.

Then the colony packs up and moves toward whatever new home is danced about most fiercely.

The bee’s dance conveys enthusiasm.

And that enthusiasm is data.

When our souls dance…

It’s enthusiasm….

That’s data….

Pointing us in a direction.

Sometimes it feels like a nudge. Other time like a pull.

A feeling you yearn for.

A place you keep thinking about.

A subject you can’t leave alone.

It often whispers before it speaks.

Subtle then all at once.

So you don’t need to know why something moves you.

You only need to notice that it does.

The soul often starts dancing before the mind recognizes the music.

It’s like the musical phenomenon called sympathetic resonance.

Where if you pluck one guitar string it can cause the exact same string on a nearby guitar to hum softly.

It didn’t have to choose to hum. They matched a natural frequency. So it danced.

You don’t choose what moves you any more than the string chooses to hum.

Your only job is to notice what’s moving inside of you.

And to stop apologizing for it not being something else.

I’m asking you “What makes your soul dance?”

Not “What music does everyone else want your soul to dance to?”

That is hard for adults.

Children simply move toward what they love.

Adults require some abstract signal of value.

We ask curiosity for a business plan.

We ask play to be productive.

Our soul screeches to a halt when every desire has to be useful.

And it’s so easy to fall into this cycle.

At first, we make what moves us.

Then people start noticing.

Soon, we start making what moves them.

But like the strings on separate guitars make each other dance, we must look inward at our own strings to notice what moves us.

Our job is to follow that sound.

And that journey is truly a dance.

You don’t need a whole plan.

You need the next honest step.

You move before you know every move.

You listen while you act.

You let the last step teach you the next one.

Maybe aliveness is less about having all the answers…

And more about becoming sensitive enough to notice what in you is answering.

What makes your soul dance?

Listen before the music stops.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

And somewhere between the wrong turns, long roads, and places I never planned to see, one idea keeps following me:

The vision gets you started. But the twists and turns make the masterpiece.

Sometimes, you just have to spin the globe.

Point.

And go.

But I’m not really talking about traveling (even though I highly recommend it).

I’m talking about leaving the small world you already know.

Every artist has a home.

The creators we study.

The styles we draw inspiration from.

The information we save.

But most of us never leave that home.

And the strange thing is, the internet gives us the illusion that we’re exploring.

Scrolling feels like exposure. But it can become an enclosure.

The algorithm learns what you like.

Then it gives you more and more of it.

Until your whole world starts looking strangely like you.

And that’s scary...

Because a cage feels like a home when it’s shaped exactly like you.

I’ve started thinking of the algorithm like a zoo of ideas.

Everything is right there.

Curated. Fenced. Fed on schedule.

Arranged for your viewing pleasure.

It looks like nature. But nothing in it can surprise you the way wilderness actually does.

The wild has all the things the zoo removes.

The boring thing.

The confusing thing.

The thing you’d never click.

The thing you don’t understand.

And sometimes, those are the exact things that would change you.

Because an algorithm can only learn from what you’ve already done.

What you clicked.

What you watched.

What you liked.

It can show you more of who you’ve been.

But your best work may need something you’ve never met.

That’s one reason I’m grateful you’re here.

By subscribing to a newsletter like this, you’re making a small choice about what gets access to your mind.

You’re choosing some of your inspiration instead of letting an invisible system choose all of them for you.

But even these words I write every Thursday morning aren’t enough...

You still need more wild inspiration.

A strange book.

A building you don’t understand.

A song from a country you’ve never visited.

A lecture in a field you don’t know about.

A conversation with someone who sees the world completely differently.

Spin the globe.

Point.

And go.

We need that unpredictability because we never know something is useful until it changes us.

And I believe that’s where some of our most interesting work is born.

When something new meets something familiar.

The new comes from outside us.

The familiar comes from inside us.

And our most inspired work is the rope tethering them.

That’s why a great song idea can feel fresh and somehow inevitable.

The best ideas don’t just show us something new. They make the new feel strangely familiar.

There’s an old quote from G.K. Chesterton that says:

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”

I used to deny this quote because I thought it was about settling.

But now I hear it as permission to begin.

Because “badly” is how almost everything worth doing starts.

We put so much pressure on choosing the “right” idea.

The “right” medium. The “right” direction. The “right” place to begin.

We’re searching for something tangible in a word that’s fluid.

But the starting point matters less than what we do once we arrive.

We spend so much of life wondering if we took the right road.

But some of the people, places, and moments we cherish most only exist because something didn’t go according to plan.

A hiccup. A failure. A heartbreak.

We don’t always know which turns matter while we’re taking them.

Sometimes the roads we thought were detours was life rewarding us.

That’s the point of spinning the globe.

You’re not giving up responsibility by leaving your creative process up to chance.

You’re only giving up the illusion that you must know where something leads before you follow it.

Chance can choose the door. But you still have to walk through it.

You still have to pay attention to notice the beauty.

You still have to make the novel connections.

You still have to turn what you find into something only you could make.

The masterpiece is rarely hiding at the end of the perfect plan.

Most of the time it’s hiding three wrong turns away.

So every once in a while…

Leave home.

Leave the feed.

Leave the map.

And spin the globe.

Point.

And go.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

I’ve been repeating this phrase in my head a lot recently.

I used to think it was about being original.

Making something no one has seen before.

Finding a way to stand out.

Becoming impossible to compare.

But originality comes with pressure.

It puts the whole world in the studio with you.

Now every idea is struggling to compete with every idea ever made.

All on a mission to be “different”.

But different from what?

Different from who?

There are billions of people.

Millions of books. Millions of songs.

An unfathomable amount of art made every day.

Trying to stand apart from all of them is too much weight for one idea to carry.

The hunt for originality often begins with fear.

We’re afraid our work is too familiar.

So we push the idea from a low vibrational place.

We make it stranger. Louder. Smarter.

But in turn, we make work that looks original and still feels empty.

We stand out without standing for anything.

The true key to making what only we can make actually has nothing to do with asking: “What can I make that is different?”

And everything to do with asking: “What feels most honest to me right now?”

Originality tells you to scan the whole world.

Honesty wants you to notice one thing.

Maybe you keep thinking about time.

Maybe you keep thinking about home.

Maybe you keep thinking about someone’s smile.

Beauty. Faith. Power. Loneliness. Freedom.

A hundred honest pieces reveal a pattern.

So lean into your truth. Piece by piece.

And over time you will start to notice the things that keep returning.

You may paint it today. Write it next year. Film it ten years from now.

The form may change. The truth will stay.

I know an artist who keeps returning to freedom.

I know another who keeps returning to grief.

Another keeps returning to love.

They all make a hundred different things.

But underneath them, they are all making the same thing.

They are turning one truth like a stone in their hand.

Looking at it from every side.

That is how you build a body of work.

Work that’s confidently yours.

And maybe this is how we build our lives too.

We look around before we look within.

We ask what kind of life will make sense to everyone else.

What job we should pursue.

What age we should accomplish a goal.

What dream others will clap for.

Little by little, we become original in private and acceptable in public.

We deny ourselves the life we would choose if no one else had to understand it.

Then one day, we wake up inside a life that looks right from across the room but does not feel like ours from inside it.

A life can be praised and still feel lonely.

A life can look full and still have no one home.

The same thing happens in art.

We can spend years making work that proves we’re talented while avoiding the work that proves we were here.

We make what gets the quick sale.

We make what earns praise.

We learn how to impress people without letting them close.

But the cost of always being understood is that you may never be known.

That is why creating from an honest place feels like coming home.

We’re returning to the parts of ourselves we left behind.

The child who made things before learning to judge them.

The person we were before we became good at becoming what was needed.

A life becomes ours the same way a body of work does.

One small, honest choice at a time.

The thing you admit. The thing you refuse.

Honest choices reveal a person.

Honest pieces reveal a voice.

Do not try to become impossible to compare.

Become impossible to replace.

Make what only you can make.

No one else can tell the truth from where you stand.

You do not have to invent a new sun.

You only have to show us what the light touched in you.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

MJ’S LEGACY

Michael Jackson is arguably the most famous and influential singer, songwriter, and performer in the history of music. From childhood, he was obsessed with perfecting his craft. Michael Jackson created Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. His ability to make timeless music like Billie Jean, Beat It, and Thriller solidified his global stardom. Jackson blended pop, R&B, funk, and rock to develop a new universal sound. He used this distinctive voice to sing catchy lyrics and melodies. His stage presence gave his music life. He used groundbreaking visuals, flashy outfits, and jaw-dropping choreography to create unforgettable experiences. Medical staff stood watch at his shows because fans fainted at the sight of him.

We categorize Michael Jackson’s legacy by the iconic moments he created. One of those moments was his performance of Billie Jean on the Motown 25th Anniversary TV special. It was the first time he introduced the world to his iconic white diamond-laced glove that became a cultural fashion statement. Also, during this performance, Michael Jackson revolutionized dance by showcasing his new dance move, the moonwalk. The moonwalk seemed to defy the laws of physics. With every step forward, he smoothly moved backward.

Michael Jackson knew that everything he created was the cornerstone of his legacy. He once said, “Every day, create your history. Every path you take, you’re leaving your legacy.” That’s why he valued challenging himself creatively in every aspect of his career. Instead of making basic music videos, he created compelling cinematic narratives. When you watch his Thriller, Smooth Criminal, or Black or White videos, he takes you along a captivating visual journey. Also, instead of performing standard dance moves, he invented his iconic signature moves, such as the robot, the anti-gravity lean, and, as I mentioned, the moonwalk. Each of these moments and creations became staples of pop culture. Even after passing away, Michael Jackson’s artistic legacy continues to influence new generations of creators.

DON’T OBTAIN. CREATE.

Your legacy isn’t built on the things you obtain, it’s built on the things you create. The things you obtain are merely borrowed. After you pass away, the material possessions you own will be relinquished from your control and transferred to a new owner. On the other hand, your creations are the evidence you leave behind to let others know that you were here. No matter who owns it in the future, there’s only one creator.

Entrepreneur Felix Dennis died with a net worth of over $750,000,000. In his old age he only had one regret. He said, “If I had my time again, knowing what I know today, I would dedicate myself to making just enough to live comfortably as quickly as I could, by the time I was 35. I would then cash out and retire to write poetry and plant trees.” He learned later in life that creativity was the secret to fulfillment and building a legacy.

People rarely remember what you did, but they always remember how you made them feel. As we discussed in the Key of Sharing and the Key of Emotion, creativity is the most effective way to evoke hard-hitting emotions at scale. If you want to leave a legacy that’s remembered for generations to come, create art so impactful that your audience can’t help but think about it, talk about it, and remember it. Ask yourself: what are the most important things, other than children, you’ve brought into the world that would not exist without you? Your answer will give you insights into the legacy you’re currently building.

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is expect our past self to know things only time could teach.

We find an old painting. An old song. An old video. An old journal.

And we cringe.

“How did I ever think this was good?”

But I think the better question is…

“Who’s asking it?”

Because the work didn’t wake up one day and become less.

We woke up seeing more.

The painting stayed the same.

The person looking at it didn’t.

We are using today’s eyes to judge yesterday’s hands.

And that idea makes it so hard for me look at my old work the same.

Yesterday’s hands could only make what yesterday’s eyes could see.

How could they have done anything else?

We can’t paint what we can’t imagine yet.

We can’t write what we don’t know yet.

We can’t build with tools we haven’t found yet.

We keep asking our younger self to borrow wisdom from the future.

That’s impossible.

Wisdom is the only teacher that gives the lesson after the test.

You don’t get a map.

Until you’ve already walked the trail.

And that’s why your old work matters.

Every painting gives you a beautiful new pair of eyes.

Then those new eyes turn around…

And judge the painting that made them.

Isn’t that strange?

Without that painting we would’ve never learned to see what was missing.

Without that story we would’ve never learned what a better story feels like.

Without that first song we would never hear the melodies we hear now.

Your old work didn’t just make art.

It made you.

Every time we create something…

…two things are made.

The work.

And the person who made it.

Most creators only acknowledge the first one.

But honestly…the second one is where the magic happens.

We think we’re making paintings.

We’re really making painters.

We think we’re making books.

We’re really making writers.

We think we’re making music.

We’re really making musicians.

The work changes you long before it changes anyone else.

Yet the hardest person for us to understand is often the person we used to be.

We look back at old work. Old choices. Old dreams. Old relationships.

Old versions of ourself.

And wonder: “What was I thinking?”

But that version of us wasn’t a “fool”.

It’s hard for me to even use the word “amateur”.

I’d rather just say we were “early”.

Because there’s a difference.

A seed isn’t a failed tree.

A caterpillar isn’t a failed butterfly.

A sunrise isn’t a failed sunset.

It’s just the beginning.

Why are we so ashamed of “becoming”?

A tree never hides its rings.

A butterfly never apologizes for being a caterpillar.

A sunset wears the colors of every hour it took to become.

Nature leaves proof that it changed.

We try to erase ours.

We delete old posts. Hide old drawings. Throw away old notebooks.

Don’t erase the bridge.

It carried you here.

One day the work you’re making today will embarrass you too.

And when that day comes…I hope you smile.

Because it means you kept going. You kept gaining. You kept growing.

You build the work.

The work builds you.

Don’t hate yesterday’s hands.

They’re the reason you have today’s eyes.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

Very few taste it.

Recently, I’ve been interested in water sommeliers.

Someone who is a professional at tasting and evaluating different types of water.

This intrigued me because every single day I swallow what keeps me alive without noticing what it has to say.

But a water sommelier notices the weight. The minerals. The softness. The sharpness. The way it enters. The trace it leaves behind.

While I say, “That was refreshing.”

They might say, “That began with a soft and silky rounded entrance, combined notes of a gentle sweetness and a faint chalky texture, and then became slightly dry across the tongue.”

Same water.

Different attention.

That’s true taste.

Taste isn’t knowing what is good.

Taste is noticing what is there.

Most people hear a song.

A musician hears the silence holding it together.

Most people see a face.

A photographer notices the smile arriving before the pain left.

Most people see a painting.

An artist sees the one imperfect mark that makes it human.

The world doesn’t become more interesting when we embrace our inner artists.

We become more interested in the world.

Our most expansive taste begins where being trapped in autopilot ends.

Even something as common as drinking water becomes an experience.

Familiarity makes things invisible.

But attention makes them strange again.

We often confuse taste with preference.

Preference = “I like this.”

Taste = “What is this actually doing to me?”

Preference collects. Taste compares.

Why does this rough sketch feel more alive than the finished piece?

Why does one sentence open us while another only impresses us?

Why does one song stay in the body after the sound is long gone?

Taste lives inside the difference.

And the deeper our attention becomes, the more precise our language to describe it becomes.

And the more precise our language becomes, the more precise our intention behind our art can become.

It’s all connected.

Taste is attention practiced until it becomes creative instinct.

It is built by slowing down.

By looking twice.

By listening past the obvious.

By asking why something moved us before asking whether others will approve.

A fundamental pillar of our creative potential is not built by more talent.

It’s hidden inside the things we stopped noticing.

Everyone drinks water.

Very few taste the minerals.

Everyone moves through life.

Very few let life move through them.

Today when you’re thirsty and you grab a glass of water...

I challenge you to slow down.

Take another sip.

There is more in your water than water.

Most artists drink.

Great artists taste.

Stay creative,
Way Walker

So much so, that I don’t know if any phrase contains more possibility than...

“A universe of possibilities.”

And somewhere inside the universe between your two ears...

I can almost see them.

Worlds of ideas.

Half-finished projects.

Questions that won’t leave you alone.

Dreams you’ve been carrying for years.

I see both the excitement and the exhaustion in your eyes as you try to keep them all alive at once.

But let me ask you something very important.

What is your sun?

I know. Your universe is big.

But what’s at the center of your solar system?

What gives you energy without asking for it back?

What still shines over you on your darkest days?

What keeps you warm through your coldest seasons?

What’s the thing that makes all your other things make sense?

Because worlds without a sun just...

Float...

Aimlessly.

Beautiful, but disconnected.

Full of possibility, yet pulled in every direction.

A sun changes that.

It gives scattered worlds a relationship to one another.

It turns cosmic chaos into a solar system.

It gives every planet a place.

I think deep down that’s what so many creatives are actually searching for.

A center.

We write a book.

Then we want to start a business.

Then we become obsessed with photography.

Then filmmaking.

Then music.

Then another book.

All distracted by the next possibly floating around in our universe.

But here’s the thing...

The greatest creators rarely spent their lives making the same work too.

But they almost always spent their lives orbiting the same sun.

The projects changed.

The medium changed.

Sometimes even the audience changed.

But underneath it all...

the same invisible force kept pulling everything together.

And that force allowed each new work to amplify each other.

My sun is awakening human creativity.

Every email. Every video. Everything I’ve ever build somehow keeps finding its way back there.

Bob Marley wrote different songs.

But they all orbited freedom.

Steve Jobs built computers, then music players, then phones...

But they all orbited simplicity.

Leonardo da Vinci painted. Studied anatomy. Designed inventions. Filled thousands of notebook pages.

But they all orbited curiosity about the world.

Lauryn Hill wrote songs about love, faith, motherhood, and injustice...

But they all orbited spiritual truth.

Unfortunately some people build their creativity around a weak energy source.

Praise. Validation. Followers. Money. Fear.

The moment those disappear...

their whole system collapses.

But the best sun a creator can have never borrows its light.

It generates it.

It might not be the thing that gets the most applause.

But it is the thing that keeps producing energy, even when no one is watching.

Whatever sits at the center quietly determines the path of everything else.

Our life becomes a map of whatever we place at the center.

Harmony naturally emerges once we embrace what everything is supposed to orbit.

The uncomfortable truth about all of this is that we are already orbiting something.

Everyone is.

The only question is whether we chose our with intention or fall victim to the gravity of expectations placed on us.

So before you chase another idea...

Before you add another planet to your universe...

Pause.

Search for the source of light underneath it all.

Because once you choose your sun...

Its gravity will gather the scattered worlds.

Revealing what belongs.

And it giving everything else permission to drift away.

What is your sun?

Stay creative,
Way Walker