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Helping creatives find their voice in an industry that rewards conformity, trends, and bullshit.
Photographers. Designers. Filmmakers. Writers. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing it all wrong in a creative industry obsessed with followers, hustle, and aesthetic perfection, this is for you.
Hosted by Patrick Fore, The Terrible Photographer is part therapy session, part creative survival guide. We talk about burnout (without the platitudes), making money (without selling your soul), and what it really takes to build a sustainable, honest creative life.
If you’ve ever wondered:
• How to make money as a creative without losing your voice
• How to recover from burnout and stay in the game
• Where to find clients who value the work
• Or if you’re just too honest for this business…
You’re not alone.
New episodes every Tuesday. Listen if you’re ready to build a creative career that still feels like you.
Episode 22: The Dangerous Creative
How Solving Problems Makes You Dangerous (Even If You're a Barista)
Look, I'll be straight with you. Sometimes I want to make episodes that have fuck-all to do with photography and I’m going to experiment with some content moving forward. And before anyone starts reaching for that unsubscribe button or mentally crafting their one-star review, let me save you the trouble: I haven't pivoted and I wont pivot. I've just gotten tired of pretending that creativity gives a shit about us staying in our lane or what we list as our job title on LinkedIn.
I want to talk about creative struggle—the real one, not the bullshit you see hashtagged on Instagram—Because I don’t think creativity checks your business card before it kicks down your door. It shows up in places that would make bosses uncomfortable and the powerful sweat. Creativity, can be found in elementary school classrooms where the teacher's dipping into her grocery money to buy supplies. Corporate meeting rooms where the intern who doesn’t know any better actually says what everyone's thinking and watches their job prospects evaporate in real time. It's behind coffee counters where minimum-wage business prodigies solve problems that million-dollar consultants couldn't crack with a PowerPoint deck and six months of billable hours.
And the most dangerous creative minds I know? Half of them would laugh if you called them artists.
I’ve been known to look at people funny when they call me an artist.
I've actually never been too keen on that term, artist. For some reason, when I close my eyes and picture an artist, I still imagine a small French man with a red beret and an patchy goatee standing in front of an easel. I'm guessing it was burned into my brain from watching Curious George when I was 3 or 4—George, that curious little asshole of a monkey, puts on the red beret and construction paper goatee with one of those cliche paint palettes while destroying the house.
By the way, why did the Man in the Yellow Hat leave this monkey alone all the time? This primate has cost him tens of thousands in damages. His insurance company won't answer his calls. Look, I'm not saying you have to put George in a cage, but maybe put him in a cage where he can't destroy your house.
But I digress. Artists. I don't think I am one. I could never pull off one of those goatees. Maybe I think it's pretentious. It could be my own self-doubt I reckon. I've always been more comfortable with creative. Because for me, creativity is broader, it's a softer skill set, but an important skill set.
I mean for me, the times I was most creative was when I was a kid and I did something royally stupid. One time I broke a window in my parents' house by hitting rocks with a tennis racquet. Which by the way is incredibly fun because they go unbelievably far. So I hit this rock and usually I hit it over the house but this time I hit it through the upstairs hallway window.
I was smart though. Creative. I didn't want to tell my parents what happened so I decided to make up this story about a bird flying into it. I remembered seeing a dead bird on the road a block or so away so that was my solution. I manufactured this perfect crime scene with a corpse of this poor sparrow that hit a windshield of a Toyota. It was like reverse CSI. Reconstructing a crime scene with meticulously positioned feathers still stuck in the shards of glass, taking into account wind speed and terminal velocity.
I was maybe 8 years old, and I pulled off this elaborate deception that would make a mob boss proud. If that isn't creativity, I don't know what is.
No, I think creativity is bigger than painting easels or cameras for that matter. Creativity isn't a category you select on a dating profile. It oozes out of you. It's how you operate on a deep level. It's the magnet pulling you into something better.
No, I think creativity is soccer moms engineering elaborate carpools that somehow get five kids to three different schools without a single meltdown. Middle managers who've learned to translate executive gibberish into something human beings can actually execute. Bartenders who can read a room better than most therapists and defuse situations that could end careers or marriages.
What they share isn't a camera or a canvas or a Moleskine notebook full of profound thoughts. It's pattern recognition. They see the crack in the foundation while everyone else is admiring the paint job. They step into the vacuum when leadership decides it's more comfortable to look the other way. And their solutions are so quietly effective, so maddeningly simple, that they make the people getting paid to manage these problems look like what they are: expensive window dressing on systemic dysfunction.
That's what we're talking about today. Not creativity as self-expression or personal fulfillment or any of that self-help seminar horseshit. We're talking about creativity as a weapon. The kind that doesn't announce itself with manifestos or revolutionary rhetoric, but just goes ahead and makes broken things work better. Which, it turns out, is the most subversive thing you can do in a world where a lot of very important people have built very comfortable careers on keeping things broken.
So whether you're wielding a camera, managing a classroom, running a team, or just trying to keep a toddler from turning your living room into a crime scene—this one's for you. Because creativity isn't about having the right tools or the right title or the right degree hanging on your wall.
It's about being awake in a world that profits from everyone else staying asleep.
INTRO
My name is Patrick Fore. This is the Terrible Photographer Podcast - honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice. Today's episode is 22: "The Dangerous Creative: How Solving Problems Makes You Dangerous (Even If You're a Barista)."
ACT I: RECOGNIZING THE PATTERNS (10-12 minutes)
The Gawande Story
Let me tell you about a surgeon who nearly got himself blacklisted from the medical establishment for suggesting something so radical, so threatening to the natural order, that it took years for anyone to take him seriously.
He suggested that doctors wash their hands.
Wait, no—that was 150 years ago, and they killed that guy for his trouble.
This story is about Atul Gawande—Harvard-trained surgeon, MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, former CEO of a billion-dollar healthcare company, staff writer for The New Yorker. Basically, a guy with enough credentials to wallpaper a small apartment and enough institutional credibility that he could have coasted on committee appointments and conference keynotes for the rest of his career.
Instead, he decided to pay attention.
Working at Brigham and Women's Hospital—one of those places where the marble in the lobby costs more than most people's houses—Gawande started noticing something that everyone else was treating like weather: surgical complications that killed people for absolutely no medical reason.
Not because they had shitty doctors. These were some of the best surgeons in the world. Not because they lacked equipment—this place had more technology than a small country's military budget.
People were dying because smart, capable, well-trained professionals were forgetting to do basic shit. Like making sure everyone in the operating room knew each other's names. Or checking that they were operating on the correct body part. Or washing their hands before cutting someone open.
[AUDIO CLIP FROM TED TALK - 30-40 seconds of Gawande explaining the checklist results]
https://youtu.be/55Nc8nccPa0?si=EYGlTRoMECuM2lO2
Here's what Gawande figured out that everyone else missed: The problem wasn't individual incompetence. It was systemic arrogance. The entire medical establishment had gotten so drunk on its own expertise that it forgot the m ost dangerous enemy of good outcomes isn't ignorance—it's the assumption that you're too smart to fuck up the simple stuff.
So he did something that nearly ended his career: He created a checklist.
A fucking checklist.
For Harvard-trained surgeons.
You can imagine how well that went over. It's like telling Ansel Adams he needs to read the camera manual, or suggesting that Gordon Ramsay might benefit from a recipe card. The institutional response was predictable: Who does this guy think he is? We've been doing surgery for decades. We don't need some consultant telling us how to do our jobs.
Except the checklist worked. Not just a little bit—dramatically. When surgical teams started introducing themselves by name before operations, complications dropped by 35%. When they started actually following basic safety protocols, death rates plummeted.
The results were so good they were embarrassing. Because they proved something nobody wanted to admit: that even the most elite institutions, run by the smartest people with the best intentions, can become so invested in their own complexity that they lose sight of what actually works.
Why This Threatens Everything
Okay, so at the risk of being a little weird, we’re going to try something new here. I'm going to talk to a few specific groups of people for the rest of this episode. Not because I'm trying to be everything to everyone, but because I've realized that the same pattern Gawande exposed in surgery is happening everywhere. And most of the people doing the actual fixing don't even realize how dangerous they are.
And before anyone starts feeling left out—yeah, I fully understand some of you are Uber drivers with cameras, Dentists with Leicas, welders, retirees, people juggling three gig jobs, or doing work that doesn't fit any neat category. I'm not trying to build the world's most comprehensive career fair here. These examples represent different types of creative problem-solving, but the pattern shows up everywhere. If you're solving problems that others ignore, this applies to you.
Okay, so here goes nothing.
First To the full-time photographer: You know exactly what I'm talking about. You've been in those workshops where they spend two hours explaining zone systems and another hour on color theory, but nobody wants to talk about the fact that your best shots happened when you stopped thinking and just trusted what you were seeing. The industry profits from complexity—expensive gear, exclusive knowledge, certifications that don't mean shit in the field. When you prove that creativity matters more than equipment, you're threatening an entire ecosystem built on making people feel inadequate.
To the CEO: You're sitting in boardrooms where everyone's discussing market penetration and optimization strategies, but you're the one who noticed that your highest-performing teams are the ones where people actually like each other. When you prioritize culture over quarterly metrics, you're not just being a good leader—you're proving that most of what they teach in business school is expensive bullshit designed to justify consulting fees.
To the therapist: You're watching colleagues burn out trying to fit every client into DSM categories while you're getting better results by actually listening to what people are telling you. When your relationship-based approach outperforms protocol-driven treatment, you're not just being a good therapist—you're threatening an entire medical-industrial complex that profits from keeping people sick enough to need management but not well enough to stop paying.
To the teacher: You're watching standardized testing destroy kids' love of learning while you're getting better results with approaches that would make an education consultant break out in hives. When your student-centered classroom produces better outcomes than data-driven instruction, you're proving that billion-dollar ed-tech companies have been selling snake oil to school districts for decades.
To the stay-at-home mom: You're raising kids who are more emotionally intelligent and resilient than their peers, but using approaches that would make a parenting expert lose their shit. When your intuitive, responsive parenting works better than the latest child development trends, you're threatening entire industries built on convincing parents they don't know what they're doing.
To the barista: You're creating customer loyalty that no corporate training program could replicate, just by treating people like human beings instead of transaction units. When your genuine connection creates better business results than efficiency metrics, you're proving that most of what passes for customer service is dehumanizing theater.
The resistance you face isn't personal—it's economic. Your solutions work too well, cost too little, and require too much humanity. And that threatens people who've built careers on selling expensive answers to problems that could be solved with basic human decency and common sense.
ACT II: THE DANGEROUS FRAMEWORK (12-15 minutes)
How Dangerous Creativity Actually Works
Every dangerous creative goes through the same three stages, whether they're aware of it or not:
Stage 1: Pattern Recognition You see the trajectory everyone else is pretending not to notice.
To the photographer: You watch people walk past the same corner every day, but you're the one who sees that at 4:17 PM, the light hits the building in a way that reveals something true about urban isolation. That's not just artistic vision—that's systems thinking.
To the CEO: You sit in meetings where everyone's debating productivity metrics while you're watching team dynamics disintegrate in real time. You can see exactly where this is heading: your best people are going to quit, your worst people are going to stay, and management will blame it on "market conditions."
To the therapist: You watch someone describe their anxiety while their body language tells a completely different story. You can see the pattern their family system created, the coping mechanisms that stopped working years ago, and exactly where this is heading if nothing changes.
To the teacher: You watch a kid shut down during math class, but you're seeing the pattern: shame spiraling into avoidance spiraling into more shame. You know exactly how this ends—another kid who "just isn't good at math" when the real problem is that nobody bothered to figure out how they actually learn.
To the stay-at-home mom: You see your kid's behavior deteriorating and you recognize the pattern: they're not acting out, they're dysregulated. You can trace it back to schedule changes, emotional stress, or just too much stimulus without enough downtime.
To the barista: You watch the morning rush and see exactly which interactions are going to escalate, which customers are having the worst day of their week, and which of your coworkers is about to lose their shit.
Stage 2: Intervention Point Identification Most people stop at pattern recognition. They see problems but assume someone with more authority should fix them. That's where you become dangerous—you realize you have agency.
To the photographer: You don't just see the developing scene—you position yourself to intercept the moment when truth becomes visible. You understand that your choice of angle, timing, and framing can shift how people see reality.
To the CEO: You don't just recognize toxic culture—you identify the specific moments where you can intervene. Maybe it's changing how meetings run, or how decisions get communicated, or just modeling the behavior you want to see instead of waiting for someone else to go first.
To the therapist: You don't just see where someone's patterns are leading—you find the intervention points where different choices become possible. You help people recognize they have more power than they realized.
To the teacher: You don't just watch kids struggle—you adapt in real time. Maybe it's changing how you explain concepts, or creating different opportunities for success, or just giving a kid permission to learn differently than everyone else.
To the stay-at-home mom: You don't just manage the symptoms—you intervene at the source. Maybe it's restructuring routines, or changing your own responses, or just giving your family permission to be human instead of perfect.
To the barista: You don't just take orders—you read people and respond to what they actually need. Maybe it's remembering their name, or making their drink exactly right, or just creating thirty seconds of genuine human connection in their chaotic day.
Stage 3: Alternative Path Creation This is where you become truly dangerous. Because when you prove alternatives work, you reveal how much unnecessary suffering everyone else has been accepting as inevitable.
The Campbell Truth
Joseph Campbell was a mythology scholar who spent his life studying the stories humans tell themselves about heroes and transformation. He analyzed myths from every culture he could get his hands on and discovered something remarkable: whether you're reading ancient Greek epics or modern superhero comics, the same pattern shows up over and over. The hero gets called to adventure, refuses at first, eventually accepts, faces trials, and returns transformed with knowledge that can help others. Campbell called this the "monomyth"—the one story that underlies all stories. What he understood that most academics missed is that these aren't just ancient tales—they're blueprints for how real change happens in real life.
Joseph Campbell said the hero's journey begins with refusing the call to adventure. For dangerous creatives, that refusal sounds like: "This is just how things are done." "I'm not the expert." "Who am I to change anything?"
But refusing the call doesn't keep you safe—it just makes you complicit in keeping things broken.
The call to adventure in your field is that moment when you recognize you could intervene differently. Most people refuse because it's easier to assume someone with more authority would already be fixing obvious problems.
But here's what Campbell understood that most people miss: The hero doesn't need permission from the system they're about to change. They just need the courage to act on what they can already see.
MID-EPISODE BREAK: THE SMART LAZY REVELATION
So, I want you to let you in on something as to why I'm so drawn to these subversive creative types.
At the risk of sounding like an egomaniac prick, I think I have (or imagine I have) a superpower. No, I can't jump over buildings in a single bound or freeze a lake with my minty fresh breath. But what I can do is piss off the management of any company that employs me. Why do you think I'm self-employed?
I can, within 2-3 weeks of observation, identify the stupidly inefficient processes that everyone happily lives with. It's like having X-ray vision, but I can't see through walls—I see through the bullshit.
And I don't think it's because I'm brilliant (although I think I am)—I think it's because I'm what I call strategically lazy. And before you get your undies in a bind, hear me out. I've always been interested in doing the LEAST amount of work possible while aiming for maximum results. Most of the time, my maximum results beat the guy who works twice as hard and long.
And it drives my bosses insane, which makes it funny for me but also annoying because I have to sit through the 5-minute pep talks that make no sense.
"Hey Patrick, can I have a word?"
"Yeah boss man, what's up."
"I noticed that you came in at 11:30 today. Did you do that thing I asked you to do?"
"Oh yeah, that was done yesterday. I handed it off and they were stoked. I actually CC'ed you on it—you didn't get it?"
"Oh, not yet... I'll go look... but you can't roll in at 11:30."
"Why? I got the thing done, and it's good. You want to come check it out?"
"No, I believe you, but you can't just roll in here when you want."
"Sure, boss man."
And that's when I knew jobs were for suckers. I mean, seriously—you think I'm lying about this stuff?
I once told a boss during a performance review that my goal was to create systems that required minimal input (minimal work) but produced optimal output. The guy's face went through this whole journey—confusion, then realization, then what I can only describe as existential horror. Like I'd just told him I worship Satan or something. All this guy heard was "minimal input"—he completely missed the "optimal output" part. His brain just shut down at "lazy employee wants to do less work."
And I'm sitting there thinking, "Dude, I'm literally trying to make your business more efficient, and you're having a breakdown because I used the word 'minimal.'" It was like watching someone get offended by a calculator because it makes math easier.
And I've learned that most people equate hard work with virtue. That the longer you work, the more productive you are, and I think that's horseshit, to be frank. Look, if you're cool with being a hamster on a wheel, chasing the cheese, that's fine with me. You can keep that wheel of broken systems humming along. For me, I'd rather work really hard for 20 hours to figure out a system than spend 120 hours being ineffective at doing something that gets the same or worse results.
A lot of people are cool with just coasting in shitty, outdated systems. I'm not. And to be honest, the worst part of this whole thing for me is dealing with people in the system. Because they're either threatened by what you're doing, or worse (which is often the case), they get butthurt that your new system—which would even make THEIR job easier—would require change. That they might have to learn how to do a new thing. Even if it saved them time and effort.
So these dangerous creatives I'm talking about today? They're strategically lazy too. They see inefficiencies everyone else has learned to accept as "just how things are." They're willing to do the uncomfortable work of changing systems so better outcomes become easier to achieve.
Gawande didn't want surgeons to work harder—he wanted them to work smarter. The man wanted patients to stop getting sick and dying because of his colleagues' actions. And that simplicity made his checklist threatening to people who'd built entire careers on making surgery seem impossibly complex.
Things aren't as complex as they seem. For some reason, humans like to make things complex. I mean, there isn't any better proof than the tax system. Only professional bureaucrats could create something that stupidly, impressively complex—and then convince everyone it has to be that way.
ACT III: OWNING THE DANGER (10-12 minutes)
Why Systems Fight Back
Let me explain why your creative problem-solving makes powerful people uncomfortable.
To the photographer: The photography industry is built on artificial scarcity—expensive gear, exclusive techniques, insider knowledge. When you prove that vision matters more than equipment, you threaten business models that depend on making people feel inadequate. Camera companies don't make money from confident photographers who trust their instincts.
To the CEO: Business schools and consulting firms have a vested interest in making leadership seem complicated. When you prove that culture and relationships drive results better than data and strategy, you threaten industries built on selling complexity. McKinsey doesn't bill $500 an hour for telling you to treat people like human beings.
To the therapist: Insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations profit from standardized, protocol-driven treatments that can be measured and managed. When you prove that human connection and individualized approaches work better, you threaten systems that depend on efficiency over effectiveness. There's no billable code for giving a shit.
To the teacher: Educational technology companies and testing corporations have convinced school districts that learning requires specialized tools and constant measurement. When you prove that relationships and creativity drive real learning, you threaten billion-dollar industries. Pearson doesn't make money from teachers who trust their instincts.
To the stay-at-home mom: The parenting industry—sleep consultants, behavioral specialists, child development experts—profits from convincing parents they need professional help for normal child development. When you prove that responsive, intuitive parenting works, you threaten markets built on parental insecurity. There's no money in confident mothers.
To the barista: Corporate chains profit from the myth that customer service is about speed and consistency, that workers are interchangeable components in a machine. When you prove that genuine human connection creates better experiences than scripted interactions, you threaten business models built on dehumanization. Starbucks doesn't want baristas who think for themselves.
The Cost of Being Right
Here's the part nobody prepares you for: it's lonely as hell.
When you start solving problems that others are invested in preserving, you lose people. Colleagues who benefited from the old dysfunction. Friends who feel judged by your different choices. Family members who preferred it when you complained instead of acting.
You'll question yourself constantly. Because when everyone around you accepts something as impossible to change, and you change it anyway, you start to wonder if maybe you're the crazy one.
But here's what I've learned: The alternative to being dangerous is being complicit. And complicity feels safe until you wake up one day and realize you've spent years propping up systems that harm people you care about.
Your clarity will make some people feel exposed. When you prove that simple solutions work, it reveals how much unnecessary complexity everyone else has been accepting. And no one likes realizing they've spent years doing things the hard way.
That's when they fight back. Not with logical arguments, but with subtle undermining. Questions about your qualifications. Suggestions that you're making things more complicated than they need to be. Reminders about "how things have always been done."
The resistance isn't personal—it's systemic. Your effectiveness threatens their investment in ineffectiveness.
The Permission You Actually Need
To the photographer: You don't need industry validation to trust your eye. Your creative instincts aren't less valid because they don't match what's trending on Instagram or selling in galleries.
To the CEO: You don't need MBA approval to prioritize what actually works in your organization. Your leadership insights aren't less valuable because they come from experience instead of case studies.
To the therapist: You don't need protocol permission to use approaches that help your clients. Your clinical intuition isn't less legitimate because it's not in the treatment manual.
To the teacher: You don't need administrative authorization to adapt your teaching to what works with your students. Your pedagogical insights aren't less valid because they're not part of the official curriculum.
To the stay-at-home mom: You don't need expert validation to parent in ways that work for your actual family. Your maternal instincts aren't less reliable because they don't match the latest parenting trends.
To the barista: You don't need corporate approval to treat customers like human beings. Your understanding of what people need isn't less valuable because it's not in the training manual.
The Real Truth About Creative Work
Anthony Bourdain spent his career calling out the bullshit in kitchens, then in the world. He understood something that applies to all of you: Most creative work happens under pressure, with whatever tools you have, by people who trust their instincts over official protocols.
In Kitchen Confidential, he wrote: "Without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, and moribund."
He wasn't just talking about food. He was talking about what happens when you stop questioning how things are done and start accepting dysfunction as normal.
Most people who call themselves "creatives" are following safe formulas designed not to threaten anything. Meanwhile, you're doing creative work that would terrify most artists—because the stakes are real, the problems matter, and there's no safety net of "it's just art."
You're solving problems that affect real people, with real consequences, using real creativity. That's not just creative work—that's revolutionary work disguised as problem-solving.
And here's the truth they don't want you to know: Creative work that actually changes things doesn't feel like art. It feels like resistance.
LIGHT LEAK: ACTIVATION (5-7 minutes)
Your Creative Audit
Ask yourself these questions:
Where do you consistently get better results than "standard" approaches deliver?
What problems do you solve that others in your field have accepted as unfixable?
When has your "just trying something different" made someone in authority uncomfortable?
To the photographer: Think about the last image you made that shifted how people saw something. That wasn't just good photography—that was consciousness-raising work.
To the CEO: Remember the last organizational change you made that seemed obvious to you but surprised everyone else. That wasn't just good leadership—that was systems intervention.
To the therapist: Consider the last breakthrough with a client that came from trusting your instincts over protocols. That wasn't just good therapy—that was healing work that threatens the medical-industrial complex.
To the teacher: Think about the last time you adapted a lesson in real time and watched a struggling kid suddenly get it. That wasn't just good teaching—that was educational subversion.
To the stay-at-home mom: Remember the last family crisis you handled differently than your parents would have, and it actually worked. That wasn't just good parenting—that was generational pattern interruption.
To the barista: Think about the last time you turned someone's terrible day around with perfect timing and genuine attention. That wasn't just good customer service—that was human connection in a dehumanized world.
Community Activation
I want to hear your stories of accidental subversion. Times when your problem-solving worked so well it exposed how unnecessary the "official" approach was.
Because once we start naming this pattern, we realize how many dangerous creatives are already out there, changing things from inside systems that don't even know they're being transformed.
Systems don't break when you get loud. They break when you get effective.
Universal Application
This applies whether you're:
Redesigning how your family handles conflict
Finding ways to solve customer problems instead of following scripts
Learning despite educational systems designed for compliance
Creating art that tells the truth instead of what sells
Leading teams based on what actually motivates people
The pattern is always the same: When you start treating problems as creative challenges rather than inevitable conditions, you become dangerous to any system that profits from those problems staying unsolved.
CLOSING (90 seconds)
Before we close, I want to leave each of you with something personal.
To the photographer: Your eye is already trained. Stop letting gear reviews and technique tutorials convince you otherwise. Trust what you see over what you're told you should see.
To the CEO: Your instincts about people and culture are probably right. Stop letting consultants and business books override what you know works.
To the therapist: Your ability to connect with people is healing them. Stop apologizing for not following protocols that don't fit your clients' actual needs.
To the teacher: Your classroom innovations are changing kids' lives. Stop letting administrators convince you that standardization matters more than actual learning.
To the stay-at-home mom: Your parenting instincts are raising healthier humans. Stop letting experts undermine your confidence in what you know about your own children.
To the barista: Your genuine care for customers is creating the kind of experience that corporate training can't replicate. Stop letting managers convince you that efficiency matters more than humanity.
To all of you: The most dangerous thing about your creative work isn't that you break rules—it's that you prove the rules are optional. And once you start proving that alternatives work, you can't unknow that power.
You're not learning to be creative. You're learning to recognize the creative intervention work you're already doing—and why systems are so invested in keeping you from calling it what it is.
Which is dangerous as hell.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah... stay dangerous.