Dipping a Toe

Picking up a new practice — not to be perfect, but to be.

It’s hard when many things come easy. How does that sound? Well, it feels a little wrong to write even when it feels so true.

Growing up I was good at lots of things. It wasn’t hard to try something once and reach an acceptable level of success. And trying many things led to a busy schedule — from study groups to soccer practice and orchestra and my job at the horse barn before lessons twice a week.

I really loved all of these things, and because I loved them I was good at them.

January 1, 2020 felt a lot like my old schedule: a morning walk with my dog, heading downtown for a day at the office, and fitting in an hour or two at the yoga studio before grocery shopping and heading home.

Sometimes instead of yoga it was a writing group. Or planning a photo shoot with some friends for the following weekend.

I was doing lots of things I loved, going just below the surface, scratching the itch. To create, to stretch, to cook, to breathe. I thought it was working.

Enter March 16, 2020. I’m fortunate to still have my job and blessed to be excited about starting work from home. Do you remember in the spring how so many people started new hobbies? You were probably one of them. And while I scrolled through photos of knitting projects and new guitars and somewhat successful loaves of sourdough bread, I struggled. I didn’t want to start anything new, and for once I had time to really reach deeper than the surface of the many things I already knew I loved doing.

Communities (global, local, digital or otherwise) found healing in the entertainment of these burgeoning projects. A global pandemic had stopped the world as we knew it. We were hurting — we still are — and any small joy to ease the fear and isolation eased a fraction of our suffering.

I remember saying to myself, now I really have the time. But for what? I couldn’t name it.

Maybe the book whose thread weaved through notebook pages and old dreams and text messages I sent myself when I couldn’t find a pen. Maybe the photos piling up in photoshop I’d been meaning to edit but hadn’t yet found the time. Maybe now I’d find the strength (and will) to get those abs my younger self had always craved. Instead, I didn’t. I couldn’t pick what my project was. So I did mostly none of it.

You’ve probably figured by now that I’m a perfectionist. It stems from a belief passed down to me that if you’re doing something at all, you might as well do your best. Do it right. My younger self did a lot of things right (though plenty wrong), especially the things that counted. But somewhere between college and those years of floating afterwards I developed an insecurity of my many interests.

The world I’ve encountered seems to glorify being the best. I bet you’ve seen it, too. I suppose it makes sense, in theory, and it’s also never felt right. I’ve never been the best at any one thing, and I’m sure that’s true for most of us. The world says: influence and virality is the shiny path to success! There’s a voice out there that’s made its way to me and so many like me. Almost a whisper in a voice not my own, but not unfamiliar, telling me that joy in creating isn’t enough. It has to be liked. It has to be shared.

I’ve always loved the way words found me. I remember sitting in the backseat on the way home from soccer practice as a kid. Not any one thing was on my mind when all of sudden a set of words found me and filled me from the inside out. I hadn’t yet started keeping a notebook, and the words wouldn’t make sense to share out loud, but I held onto them so tight in my head until I found an old journal in my desk drawer twenty minutes later.

Childishly, it’s hard for me to acknowledge that I never be the best at any one thing. Probably a whole lot childish. But honestly it’s been a hard truth for me to face. It’s surely something I would’ve realized in my life with or without a global pandemic, but a year of so much time for nothing and everything all at once brought me to seeing this belief for what it is. Crippling.

If I only create to be the best, I’m denying myself the love of a new pen on paper, of sunrise hikes to catch the light, of sharing stories I love telling.

I deserve better. By writing and sharing my world of creativity — from travel stories, photography, and rumblings of my own psyche — I’m dipping a toe and slowly sinking deeper into a well of possibility I’ve been depriving myself. And this time, there’s no pressure. It will exist simply as a practice of creating. Not to be perfect, but to be.