Day 259: Dried fruit

If you suffer from self-doubt and crippling perfectionism then this post is for you. Have you ever tried to do a thing and found yourself thinking that there’s no point trying because you won’t be any good at it? Because you won’t be the best?

Maybe you dream of creating portraits of celebrities out of bits of dried fruit. I don’t know. It’s your dream. I’m not judging.

But maybe you lie awake at night beset by worries about all the incredible dried fruit celebrity portrait artists out there, all the groundbreaking work being done in the field of dried fruit celebrity portraiture, and how you will never measure up. You look at your own efforts sitting on easels across the room, the leathery apricot swirls in the wonky shape of James Dean’s coiffured profile, the banana chips overlaid into an approximation of a wounded Kurt Cobain, and you despise it all. It makes you sick. None of it is good enough. None of it works. You might as well just give up and crawl back under that rock out of which you had the sheer temerity to poke your stupid ugly head. Dreams of being a dried fruit celebrity portrait artist indeed! As if you could ever achieve such a hallowed goal. What tosh!

Well, I’m here to tell you that all that is crap. That whole mindset is damaging and painful and illusory. It is but a boundary guardian of your own mind, warning you off from exploring the exciting territory of the unknown, telling you to stay safe in your dull little village.

Stride out, and slay that guardian. Slay it with truth and reason. Bring your fear out into the open and shine the light of awareness upon it.

You don’t have to be the best at what you do. You don’t even have to be good. Many people are not. By definition basically nobody is the best. And there’s plenty of room for people in your chosen pursuit of all skill levels. There’s a whole hierarchy. A whole ecosystem. You’ll find your place.

You could be a professional dried fruit celebrity portrait artist, sure, but you could also live a full and worthwhile life as an amateur dried fruit celebrity portrait artist, earning money a different route. Or you could be a dried fruit celebrity portrait teacher, guiding young hopefuls through their first steps creating dried fruit celebrity portraits of their own. You’d be great at helping your students avoid the common pitfalls, having fallen foul of most of them yourself. Or you could be a dried fruit celebrity portrait reviewer, working for a broadsheet newspaper, or running your own blog, critiquing the dried fruit celebrity portraits of others. What about a dried fruit celebrity portrait TV show presenter? A businesswoman selling dried fruit celebrity portrait supplies? An inventor who designs a new tool that streamlines the whole process of creating dried fruit celebrity portrait art? Or simply someone out on the street selling their dried fruit celebrity portrait art for pennies to passersby?

Would it be worth it, even then? With no money, and no fame, and no esteem, would you still feel compelled to glue dried fruit onto canvases into the shape of Audrey Hepburn smoking a cigarette in Breakfast at Tiffany's?

If not, then you didn’t actually want to do this thing, and the universe has kindly shown you this, and you can go gladly and look for something else to occupy your brief moments on this meaningless rock. Easy.

But if it would still be worth it, then go do it. 

Just go do it.

After years of hard work you might become the best, which could be nice - or being the best could be horrendous and stressful and anxiety-inducing and laced with constant suffering, as most things in life end up being. Or you could be not-the-best, and probably still have a life laced with constant suffering.

But what matters is that you find something that you yourself believe to be a meaningful use of your time, whatever that means to you - something that lights and continuously reignites that candle sitting at the centre of your soul - thrilling you to be a part of it, whether you’re the world’s number one ranked seed or a lost and forgotten nobody.

Find that thing, and do it, and do it, and do it, and you’ll never be a nobody to yourself. 

The world and everyone else in it will be happy to figure out where you slot into the hierarchy. You won’t have time to worry about all that. You’ll be busy.

...... 

Music: Now, Now, by St. Vincent.