Since I first learned the meaning of the word, I have thought of myself as a creative person. My cousin and I started writing together in early elementary school, and long before then we were dressing up, crafting stories in my grandma’s guest bedroom closet about pirates and spending hours assembling play-mobile families and lego armies. In high school I took art and photography classes. In college I decided to pursue a degree in creative writing. A hesitant visit to my school’s poetry club sparked a whole new passion for words, language and imagery, and it has challenged and grown me as a writer more than I could have ever thought possible.

In high school I took the required number of credits for math and then promptly cut myself off, making sure to get college credit where I could so I never had to take another math class for the rest of my life. This is my fourth year without math.

The same goes for science. I loved the concepts and ideas in my biology class, and in elementary school had loved learning about different kinds of rocks and minerals, but all of the minute facts, all of the seemingly random numbers, all the calculations, all the proofs, the equations, the meticulous keeping of data and the long string of scientific names unpronounceable to the human tongue— I feared, resented, and slogged my way through.

I survived chemistry because of the kindness and patience of our student teacher who also managed to make the class fun, but I was certain I would drown in physics.

Thankfully, I was able to take forensic science instead, which was fascinating because of all of the crime shows on television. It became a good resource for story details. Plus, who doesn’t love fingerprinting, analyzing blood splatter patterns and pretending you’re as cool as Sherlock Holmes as you deduce your way through the evidence of the crime scene set up in the middle of the classroom?

I feel safe among the arts, comfortable enough to explore and experiment. I fear the sciences, boxed in, crushed beneath numerical laws I don’t understand.

My brother is the complete opposite. He took as few English courses as he could get away with. He skipped through AP chemistry, physics and calculus like it was a field of daisies. Then, after shocking us all by taking a poetry elective for English credit, recycled his notebook at the end of the year (I tried to rescue it out of the trash pile several times but to no avail.)

While I hoped to never take another math course, he made sure to get college credit so he never had to take another English class ever again.

My brother and I are very different people. I watch Doctor Who, he watches videos on quadcopters. I write cards in cursive, he makes a binary alphabet. I scribble poetry, he types computer code. I pre-order the next book in a series; he gets excited about the Apple conference, the newest software updates and the bells and whistles on the new iPhone.

But just because he doesn’t draw or paint or write stories or poetry or love to read, it doesn’t mean that my brother is not a creative person. Creativity cannot be limited to one area of interests. It’s not about putting paint on a canvas or lead on a paper or words on a document.

It’s about finding what you are passionate about and doing it your own way, crafting it from your own perspective and helping others to see the world from a different point of view.

My brother is one of the many people who has helped to change my view on what it means to be creative. I used to not understand what he saw in his passions for technology and math, engineering and physics and calculus. I saw cold numbers, dizzying equations and story problems that weren’t the kind of stories I was ever talking about.

But, my brother is brilliant. For a science project in middle school he made a hover board out of cardboard and a leaf blower. He built his own quadcopters, installed a camera on them and with practice has learned to fly them with daring and finesse. He pushes technology to its limits and sees the beauty and potential in the things I brush aside because I don’t understand them.

We speak two different languages of creativity. One is not greater or lesser than the other.

I am thankful for the boy who tried to teach me binary, and even though I didn't understand it, and wrote my name in zeroes and ones on the envelope of a birthday card, because that is creative.