If you've come with the idea, like I did, that you can make it useful and "productive" - it will sit dead in some dusty cabinet of your mind, like grandma's fancy china waiting for a nice enough occasion.

Ironically, creativity probably will be generous with fringe benefits - but giving creativity a goal is like catching water with a colander. If there's one thing I can promise you, it's that if you let it, usefulness will tackle you into a headlock like a high school bully leaping out from around the corner, instead of letting you meander the hallways in peace.

Creativity is, simply, engaging with your ideas, fiddling with them like a fidget toy.

Consider ideas as quarks: zapping chaotically with an electric charge, they float around the plane of quantum physics. They fire their energy into the void until they hit an open and willing human collaborator that will bring them into the material world. You don't have to respond to every quark that hits you. But if you want to keep one around, you need to be active, produce some electric charge of your own.

Being creative is much more like gardening with mystery seeds than it is manufacturing: digging in the grimy dirt, burying the seeds, watering them for weeks or months, with curiosity rather than expectation of what - if anything - will come of them. You've cared for them just the same.

And like fungus and mold, some fear and anxiety will show up, growing in the crabby environment of uncertain outcomes. It's normal; spray them with the concoction of your confidence and humor and past results.