There’s a moment in every creative’s life when the dream starts to become real. You feel it in your bones. You’ve spent years in the dark, making things for no one, maybe even talking to yourself more than anyone else. But then something shifts. You decide to show your work to others and someone sees it. Moreover, they share it. Suddenly, people are pointing in your direction and whispering: “You gotta check this out.”
That’s the first life of a creative. I call it the Growth Phase. It’s thrilling. It’s terrifying. And if you’re not careful, it’s the manic high you’ll spend the rest of your life chasing.
I’ve been lucky, or unlucky enough to see this cycle play out. Not just in my own life, but in the careers of people I’ve worked with, admired, envied, and watched quietly unravel. I’ve come to believe there are four distinct lives a creative goes through, assuming they make it past the first. And almost no one tells you about the last one.
So here it is: the map I wish someone had handed me a long time ago.
1. The Growth Phase (The Spark)
This is the part we romanticize. The garage-band energy. The kid-with-a-pencil-on-the-bus years. The first few sales. The early shows. The posts with 12 likes that feel like gospel.
If you’re lucky, people start to gather around your work like a campfire. They feel like they’ve discovered something special and that they discovered you. And because of that, they tell others. There’s no marketing strategy here. No algorithm magic. Just pure momentum. Organic, exponential excitement.
Because what you don’t know, what you can’t know until it happens, is that every fire eventually attracts moths. And some of them will love you until you change. Others will love you until you don’t.
2. The Imperial Phase (The Crown)
British journalist Paul Morley coined the term “imperial phase” to describe a moment when an artist is both critically adored and commercially unstoppable. The Pet Shop Boys were in theirs when Neil Tennant borrowed the term and made it famous. It’s the moment where culture bends around your work like heat waves. Everything you touch turns to relevance. You become your own gravitational pull.
In this phase, you can do no wrong. Or more accurately: you can do wrong, but everyone’s too busy praising you to say it out loud. You’ve arrived. You’re on panels, in group shows, getting the calls you used to dream about when you were broke and sleeping in Walmart parking lots to get by.
And you start to believe it. Why wouldn’t you?
This is where the danger deepens. Because while you’re surfing that wave, you don’t realize that time has already started the clock on the next phase.
3. The Fat Elvis Phase (The Mirror)
This is the part no one wants to talk about. The Fat Elvis phase.
Let me be clear: it’s not about your waistline. It’s about bloat. Cultural, emotional, creative bloat. You’ve been everywhere. Done everything. The very ubiquity that made you feel like you were winning now makes you predictable. People start to turn—not because your work is bad, but because it’s you doing it.
And they’re bored of you.
Or worse: they remember the old you and start to compare. “I miss their early stuff.” “They’ve sold out.” “It’s all the same now.”
And you, if you’ve been successful long enough, stop listening. You think: I know better. I’ve been here longer. And maybe you have. But success can turn into a vacuum, and in that vacuum, the echoes sound like applause even when they’re not.
This is where many creatives stall. Some spiral. Some disappear. Some dig in and double down on the thing they think people want, which is often the worst move of all. They become cover bands of their own mythos.
But there’s a narrow road through this. One that requires a level of humility most of us weren’t taught to value.
If you can make it through the Fat Elvis years without imploding, something strange and beautiful can happen.
"You are either going to have to let that creation go and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are. Or you are going to have to kill who you really are and fall into your grave grasping onto a character that you never were." -Jim Carrey
4. The Elder Statesman (The Mountain)
This part doesn’t come with headlines. There’s no press release. No sudden wave of new followers.
It comes quietly.
Someone younger stumbles onto your work. They weren’t there for the rise, the crown, or the fall. They find a print at a thrift shop. A YouTube clip. A dusty book at the back of the shelf. And they think: Why don’t more people know about this?
And just like that, your work begins again. Not as hype. Not as nostalgia. But as foundation.
If you kept creating through the backlash… if you didn’t self-immolate or build an ego fortress… you’ll emerge as something more powerful than popular:
This is the moment Brian Eno’s ambient records become sacred to a generation burned out by overstimulation. The moment an old essay goes viral for someone feeling lost in their 20s. The moment a kid reads Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in college and realizes art can whisper and still haunt you forever.
It’s the mountain stage. Quiet, still, and high above the noise.
You become the elder statesman.
If you zoom out far enough, this isn’t just a cycle for artists. It’s the shape of almost every cultural story. It’s Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. It’s the Hero’s Journey. It’s the rise, fall, and resurrection.
But what they don’t always tell you is that resurrection doesn’t mean fame. It means survival. It means still doing the work when no one’s looking. It means knowing who you are without the applause.
If you’re in your Growth phase, enjoy it but don’t define yourself by the rush. If you’re in your Imperial phase, be generous. Share the spotlight. Stay curious. If you’re in your Fat Elvis phase, don’t fight the backlash outlast it. And if you’ve made it to the Mountain, don’t be bitter that it’s quiet up there.
Be grateful. You’re not chasing the dream anymore.
You are the dream someone else is chasing.