Blocks and sandcastles. Shoveled holes and flower crowns.
When you were a child you would scribble on walls and on printer sheets, gleefully holding them up in search of recognition from whoever's eyes lay present to grasp your effort. We were once unafraid. Barefaced in our crude works, born to sew patterns of becoming, poking our fingers through the world’s fabric to see where they pop out the other side. Our sandboxes and grassy fields. Sincerity.
Today we tend to think of such things as wasted effort. We convince ourselves that playthings and pastimes must be swept up onto shelves. A conversation I had a few weeks ago: I can't believe we wasted all those hours grinding League as kids, imagine if we spent those days actually learning something useful It was fun though Yeah, I guess it was fun.
But this post isn't about childhood, it is to tell you that there is no such thing as wasted time. So much of what we are is because of the things we did in idle time. Some currents could never have been suppressed. What can be difficult to grasp is that by investing your attention in doing is the only way you could have ever known. You are better off for the effort. The true way out is by going through the passage. In the years to come you will admire your own dead-ends. The coincidences. Unconscious preparations that brought you to where you are now.
It’s difficult to brave the flaws and imperfect, awkward middles. The figuring-out. It is for this reason that I admire process, especially their beginnings: the genesis of projects, artwork, organizations. It’s far harder to cast yourself into orbit sweating, burning, spiraling, than to be a commentator up in the box. It requires a special tenacity to hit wall upon wall, then pick back up again.
To stumble is to rebuild yourself. To chart a new course with each footprint. Crumpled Wendy’s napkins in half-drunken stupor. The smell of moss in your hands. Backlit nights clicking link after link in bottomless pursuit. None of it is a waste. Nothing is entirely detritus. It is all in service of you. The great improv dance of life’s back and forth sambas and pirouettes and the tears and handfuls of hair in quiet desperation as we keep rising to face whatever unseen stalks out of the murk. That is what makes this whole blue marble dice roll worth it. The chance to conjure something meaningful out of nothing. Something unexpected.
Criticism is easy and playing is hard. Savor the edges of drafts and the un-EQ’d demos, the distended notebooks and filed flickers of inspiration, the v2s, v3s, v-whatevers. The misshapen clay cup. The sowing of to-do lists into page, then screen, then page again. The immense labor of finishing the final 5% of anything.
Show more scribbles. Send someone a draft. And some unsolicited advice: hold tight to the ability to answer your own questions. That’s the most important skill you'll ever learn.
“Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”
The first step has already been taken. You’ve taken countless of them your entire life. You won't need a map. If you can build a sandcastle or shovel a hole, you’ll be alright.
this felt like a warm hug - thank you