Don't get discouraged! It's all down to learning skills and maturing. I'm 55 and still improving my skills and my musicality.
For sounds... a good way to improve kicks and, well, almost anything, is to apply some compression. It can really make sounds come forward in the mix, with more body and strength, without peaking. There are plenty of good, free, musical compressor plugins out there, such as TDR Kotelnikov. Other tools like transient shaping can help with drums. Also, watch some YouTube videos on EQ and train your ears to hear what EQ does and how it can help with sound. For example, if you use compression on too many things, it can get congested in the mix, so you'd use EQ to scoop some frequencies out of some of the sounds to create more space for other sounds in the mix. And an overall multi-band compressor on the mix bus can help your whole mix gel together and have some punch to it.
Arrangements are hard. But I've found that working on transitions can really drive an arrangement forward, such as a drum fill just before a transition point, or a swelling reverse cymbal or even just a single snare hit on beat 4 can work magic going into a section with drums.
As for creativity, in my experience it comes and goes naturally. I'm mostly a hobbyist for music creation, so I'm not required to slave over a DAW, Typically I find that I'll create several cool things, then there may be a whole year when I'm simply not feeling it.
Getting a feel for chords and harmonies is valuable too. There's an awful lot of electronic music around that does nothing more than cycle around 4 chords, or two chords, or even (yuck!) just stays on one chord. IMO, the ear gets tired of too long without harmonic interest.
But, in general, the more of it you do, the better your technical skills will become. And with better technical skills, the creative/expressive/musical flow is less hindered by figuring out how to do stuff.