Talent and Skill

Although all of us are creative, we are not all equally talented or skilled. Some technically excellent writers/artists/dancers/musicians are not gifted. Some talented actors/sculptors/gardeners/architects lack the honed skill to really shine. We cannot change the particular giftings or natural talents we are born with, but we can improve our skill and technical ability through application and effort.
Because some natural creative talents are not stretched and developed they are often surpassed by the learned skill of the hard-working technician. So there is hope for us all in our creativity, we can all improve on the base we have and even without natural talent, we can become good in our chosen field, with sufficient effort.
Obviously to keep working hard at developing skill, we must be motivated, either externally or internally. Externally we have critics and co-creatives urging us to do better and internally we have our own desire to improve on what we have done before. None of us remains the same for long, we are continually changing, either advancing through the disciplines we apply, or allowing our abilities to decay through lack of use.
Every week I take (or attempt to take) Dad for a walk round the lake in our city. He is 85 and physically very fit, but mentally decaying fast. One of the things I have noticed is that if  he gets exercise, his brain seems to benefit (perhaps due to increased blood-flow, fresh air, meeting other people, or a combination of all 3). However, if left to himself, he would not choose the beneficial discipline of exercise despite having been a marathon runner in the past. It is starting to get to the point where his inertia exceeds my impetus and I see that one day, I too may be unwilling to discipline myself to do better in any number of ways. Knowing that, spurs me on to use whatever span of disciplined existence I may have to develop my skills and improve before decay sets in!
One of the biggest difficulties many of us face is carving out a slot of time to devote to concerns which may bring no obvious benefit to our families or our budget. Somehow the activities and needs of the family, the demands of income earning and commitments to the wider community have a way of sidelining our creative pursuits, relegating them to the bottom of the list. Describing our creativity as work is perhaps a first step in lifting it above the bottom of the ‘to do’ list. Getting the people around us to see it as work may take some time, but in the long run if we see it as work, they will too, eventually.