Many traditions describe humans as made in the image of a Creator. If that is true, the ability to create was never something extra. It was built into us from the beginning.
That ability shows up in many forms: a painting, a piece of writing, a company, a piece of code, a meal, a song. The form is personal, the instinct behind it is the same.
This page is about that instinct, and what it looks like when people act on it.
Eight observations about creation, and why people make things.
Humans have always made things: tools, stories, shelters, meaning itself. Creating is not a rare talent. It is an old and basic part of being human.
A creation can take almost any shape: a business, a garden, a piece of research, a relationship built with care. None of these forms is more valid than another.
Every creation carries something of the person who made it. It turns an internal thought or feeling into something others can see, hear, or use.
Money can follow from what someone makes, but it is rarely the reason the best things get made. Belief in the work usually comes first.
People often sense what they want to make before they can fully explain it. That instinct tends to be worth paying attention to.
Not everyone finds their form of creation right away. For some it takes years of trying different things before one of them fits.
When something is built from genuine interest, recognition and reward tend to follow naturally, even when that was never the goal.
Creating is rarely a one time event. For most people it is closer to an ongoing search that continues throughout their life.
Many people carry something inside them for years without giving it a shape: a song never sung, a painting never started, an idea never built.
It stays there until, eventually, it fades.
Once it takes a form, whether that is a product, a piece of writing, or a piece of art, it becomes something other people can actually see, hear, or use.
Turning something imagined into something real changes it. It can now be seen, used, and judged by others, not only imagined by one person.
Coding Dutchman was built out of curiosity, mostly to see how something like this comes together. Not for financial gain, but for the feeling of making something that other people can see and enjoy.
That is the same idea this page is built around. Every person creates something, whether that is a business, a piece of writing, a meal, a solution to a problem at work, or something else entirely.
It can be useful to notice, every now and then, what you are currently creating in your own life. If the honest answer is nothing in particular, that is simply worth being aware of.
Whatever you choose to create tends to say something about who you are.
Feel like going for a walk?
Walking Dutchman ->