Creating is a vulnerable. Any artist will tell you that. Some piece of the artist going into the art. Any grandmother will tell you that the number one ingredient in her food is love — that part of herself she puts into the food. That’s the gift of the artist. It makes good food great, good stories rich and sound music exceptional.

Criticism, by contrast, requires nothing. Anyone can comment on how the pork tasted too porky or the trumpet too brassy. The creator contributes, acts, gives and builds.

The act of creating is inherently vulnerable. The question I have is to the creator: who is the creation for? If the creation is for the buyer or consumer, then we work hard to get it to some ill-defined standard. I once worked with someone who sent something back every time we ate together at a restaurant. She wasn’t ugly about it, but she had a very precise definition of what she wanted, even if it was off menu. The only corrections at grandma's house was that the gravy only covered the biscuits and not the bacon and eggs also.

But what if the creation is for the creator. What if grandma's fried chicken was an expression of love, inherent in its frying. What if the author needed to write as an expression of her aliveness; a necessity of her existence. Her obligation then, is to the act of creating, not the consumer. Her soul needs to write. His heart needs to paint.

In my view, creating is an implicit apart of being human. We are built to create. We are made to make, though certainly not limited to "art." People make businesses and make children more capable. Fantastic; thank you.

Create. Make for you. Build as an act of honoring the Creator.