You Don't Have to Be Good at It

Permission to be a learner.

What would you do if you knew nobody was going to judge how good you were?

Don’t you just hate some people, not actually hate – let me be clear about that – but in the way that you hate with love. In this case I am talking about the people who seem to try something once and are immediately expert at it. I hate those people. Also, for full disclosure, sometimes that can also be me – I know, I hate myself for it but what can you do?

But we all know, it is rare that someone tries something entirely new and is good from the first try. We all must learn everything we do. As children we are encouraged to try, to practice, to learn and improve. All the while managing to retain our enjoyment. As adults we tend to link skill and expertise with enjoyment as if you must have one before you can have the other. When did this change happen? I would hazard a guess around the time when we had to choose our options at school – the subjects we are going to study for our O Levels / GCSE’s. Then we choose the subjects we are good at and stepped away from the subjects we enjoyed.

We start to believe enjoyment is a reward for competence rather than a reason to do something in the first place. Being good becomes the goal and being curious quietly slips into the background. The hunt for a “good education” meant for many of us we left our creative side in the pursuit of more academic pursuits, and personally I wish there had been more space for feeding the soul at school. Not to say I regret my choices, but it took decades to rediscover my love of creativity

So, we agree, that when we are learners, we will produce things that are bad. Then why does it feel like that we can’t enjoy the thing we are bad at? Think about it, when was the last time someone said, “I’m not very good at cooking, but I love it so do it anyway!” Of course not, it’s always “I don’t like cooking, I am not very good at it”.

But what if we flipped the script? You can enjoy doing something while you are learning. Enjoyment does not require skill, in fact, to attain skill it most certainly requires enjoyment.

I am British and we are known for being self-deprecating. We are far more likely to declare something as rubbish and only fit for the bin than say “I like it, it’s pretty good”. The only thing is that this is only fair when something is truly rubbish. Now I am not piling on the rubbish and wonky and unusual things that you and I make. There is a place for them, but when people declare work that isn’t rubbish as such it skews perception.

Social media takes this a step further. There, people only show the finished item, perfectly positioned and photographed. The 47 other items that went horribly wrong along the way are hidden out of sight, those imperfect practise runs forgotten and pretended like they never happened.

Recently I found a cute crochet project. Despite several attempts I was really struggling how to join the individual flowers. I was at the point of giving up, feeling deflated that I was struggling.

I had to remind myself that no doubt the original creator had already made all the mistakes I was making before finding success. What I wanted to see was the prototype, the mistakes and abandoned drafts. For a minute there I lost my enjoyment in the project. The comparison was stealing my joy.

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My practice attempt The final version

My point is that not everyone is trying to become good at something, they just like making things. While some strive to improve, to master the skill, others are happy enjoying their work in their comfort zone. Both are right and ultimately both are legitimate reasons to create. No one gets to judge you for whichever camp you sit in.

This is where I sit. I love painting, my enjoyment of it exceeds my talents. I am happy to help and offer feedback and share what skills I have, when asked for, but also, I can get behind anyone who is happy with just being able to do the thing as well as they do right now. For me, a bad project made with love and born from enjoyment is 1000% better than a perfect piece that has sucked the happiness from the maker.

My, could do better, bowl of fruit.

Imagine a table where nobody is embarrassed to say, “I've never done this before.”

Or:

Imagine being able to put your wonky first attempt in the middle of the table and someone saying, “Oh, that's interesting. What happens if you try...?”

Maybe that's the permission we need as adults. Not permission to be brilliant, but permission to begin. Permission to make something awkward, imperfect, and unfinished. Permission to enjoy ourselves before we've earned the right to call ourselves good at it.