Making something useful, like a shelf, a tool or an app, is creativity with a job. It counts.

Usefulness does not disqualify something from being creative work. A shelf that fits an awkward alcove required measurement, a decision about joinery, a judgement about proportion, and somebody solved all of it. The idea that art has to be useless to be art excludes most of what people actually make and most of what they are proud of.

Build something this month that solves a problem in your own house. A hook where you keep losing your keys, a small app for a thing you do weekly. Notice that the satisfaction when it works is the same feeling people describe about finishing a painting.