I think we’ve forgotten how to be beginners.
Or maybe we’ve just gotten really uncomfortable with people seeing us be bad at something.
You can decide you want to learn guitar and within five minutes you’re watching somebody who has been playing for fifteen years make it look effortless.
You want to make videos? There are people your age with studios, editors, and cameras that cost more than your car.
You want to learn how to draw? Good luck opening Instagram without seeing somebody make something incredible in thirty seconds.
And I think somewhere along the way we started treating that as the starting line.
Which is fucking ridiculous when you think about it.
I do this with my own stuff. I’ll get excited about an idea, start working on it, and then catch myself comparing what I’m making to something somebody else has spent years getting good at.
Sometimes I haven’t even finished the thing yet.
I’ve already decided it isn’t good enough.
The weird part is I don’t actually expect other people to be amazing at something the first time they try it. If a friend told me they wanted to learn an instrument, I wouldn’t ask why they couldn’t play like somebody who has been touring for a decade.
But apparently I think I should be able to skip that awkward part myself.
And the awkward part is kind of the whole deal.
You make something terrible. You figure out what you hate about it. You try again. Eventually there’s a day where something that used to be hard isn’t hard anymore.
That used to be a pretty normal way to learn.
Now it feels like we want to have the result before we’re willing to be seen doing the work.
I don’t think the internet created that feeling. People have always compared themselves to other people. But it sure made it easier to find a thousand people who are better than you at the exact thing you just started.
I’m trying to get better about letting myself suck at things for a while.
Not everything has to become a business. Not every hobby has to turn into content. And not every first attempt needs to be something I’d proudly show the world.
Sometimes being bad at something just means you finally started.
