You know, my two year journey with Flash has been a painful but eventually gratifying one. I think every person who is involved in creating something goes through this pain. The pain of having to first acquire the skills, learn the tools of the trade, and finally reach a mastery level whereby you are endowed with the total freedom to create. You and the tool have now become one. You think in the tool, and the tool is an extension of your creative being -- that is, until the next upgrade.

Here are some of the important ingredients for becoming skilled at something (in the computer industry at least):

1) You gotta love it, otherwise forget it and go do something else. Because otherwise everything I say below will be too painful to bear.
2) Learn a ton and never stop learning.
3) Learn from all sources. Subscribe to forums, blogs, etc.
4) Work on as many projects as you can. Work on two or three projects at the same time if you can handle it.
5) Read as much code as possible.
6) Watch how others do it. You can never be good just working by yourself. You need to work with people better than you.
7) Teach. Contribute to the community. Just as a good blood circulation gives you a healthy body, giving your time to others keep the creative energy of the entire community flowing. You will get better pay as an indirect result of that - not that it matters.
8) Learn as many language as you can. Just as knowing Latin can improve your French, knowing different languages increase your expressive power in any language you are currently using.

For example:
You want to assign a value to a variable if it is undefined -
This is how normally people do it:

if (num == undefined) num = 1;

But if you know Perl, you will know this idiom:

num = num || 1; or num ||= 1;

(Of course, don't do it to a Boolean type, cuz then you will always get true!)

9) Get a certification or something. A certification may not get your a raise right away, but it lets you test your knowledge. It forces you to strategize your learning too.
10) Remember that your work is not you. Once you are done with a creation, let it go. Never attach your ego to it, never expand your ego with it. Can you hear your ego says: "hot dang I am good"? This can happen when you start finding yourself better than those around you (that's why these days people love to write bio long before they die). Don't fall into this mental trap. You are just freaking lucky to have a functioning brain that can think logically, that's all. So get it over with.