Book Review — The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

I picked up this book during a moment when I felt like I had lost touch with my creativity. I wasn’t feeling inspired in what I do, and something inside me felt hollow, like a quiet emptiness in my soul. Reading The Creative Act reminded me of who I used to be: a child who danced ballet, played the piano, performed on stage, someone who created, expressed, and moved through the world artistically.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that part of myself. I focused on sports, on productivity, on work. I started writing sometimes, but not consistently. I didn’t realize how much I missed the act of creating, how vital it was to my sense of aliveness.

When I entered the tech world, I believed it was possible to be creative there, but I couldn’t quite find how. I built, I coded, I solved problems, yet something in me still longed for expression. It wasn’t until I began speaking at events, sharing knowledge, and standing on stages that I recognized this too was a form of performance. The nervous energy before going on stage, the preparation, the act of expressing ideas in front of others, it wasn’t dancing, but it was something. My body and my soul had found another way to move.

Rick Rubin’s book gave me a framework to see creativity not as a discipline, but as a way of being. It reminded me that every act, whether building an app, telling a story, or writing a line of code, can be a creative expression if it’s done with awareness and presence. It’s not about what we produce; it’s about the state we inhabit while we create.

As a technologist, I found new meaning and purpose in my work through Rubin’s words. I started to see how creativity and art aren’t separate from innovation; they are its foundation. Without art, there’s no soul in what we build. Without creativity, technology becomes hollow.

I also kept thinking about how education today often leaves art behind, emphasizing engineering and technology instead. Yet art has always been how we remember ourselves, how we tell the story of who we were. From cave paintings to music to sculpture, art has been humanity’s record of feeling. In this digital era, as everything becomes more automated and optimized, I wonder: what stories will we leave behind?

Will museums one day display TikToks as cultural relics? Will AI-generated art replace human expression, or simply expand it?

The Creative Act doesn’t give answers; it gives space. It invites you to remember that creativity is not a profession, but a practice of being alive. It’s a reminder to listen deeply, to observe, to stay open, and to never stop creating, no matter the medium.