I hope this sucks.

I hope this is the worst piece of writing you’ve ever read. If you were looking for a perfectly edited, sexy version of anything, keep looking. This is not that. This is me on the couch with a tub of ice cream. Not sexy, not cute, just real. God, that feels good. If you struggle with expressing yourself publicly, but feel a deep need to do so, pull up a chair. Chill, read, breathe.

I have had a romantic idea of writing for a long time; somewhere out there was the key to me writing perfection and I didn’t want to start writing until I got there. How ironic is that? To write, I must be perfect or I will not do it. For years, this kept me from writing and publishing my work, which kept me from being a writer. You know what all writers have in common? They write and publish their work. They publish shit and then they publish great shit.

In a world where most art looks perfectly curated and pruned, it is easy to forget that those pieces were once completely non-existent, forged from years of experience and practice. There’s a reason people say others had 5-year, overnight successes. They spent years honing their skills and only then, once they discovered their voice, style, process, were they *suddenly* recognized for their work. It’s easy to think someone else is more skilled or worthy of that success, especially because it takes you out of the running altogether. If someone is naturally talented in an area you are not naturally talented in, it’s so freaking simple to just drop the ball and watch it roll down the stairs, into the basement, lost forever with all the other ideas that you weren’t worthy of running with.

If you’re trying to get started with something, start right now. Do it! Create the video, write the poem, draw the sketch, audition for the community play, go for a walk, bake a terrible pie. The list goes on. You will never find what you’re looking for through a google search or rationality. This is you: dipped in paint and splattered on a canvas. It will be messy, frustrating, scary and at the end, you will have made art; an art that is just yours that can’t be replicated or replaced because you cannot be replicated or replaced. (Okay, sure, if someone clones you, maybe, but let’s leave that for another day.)

The beauty of art does not come from creating something objectively good that people ogle; the beauty is taking a piece of you — happy, sad, hurt, curious, unsure — and freezing it within this moment of time to represent yourself. Then others see or listen or touch or smell or taste and maybe nothing happens. Or maybe you strike a chord and everything happens. Suddenly, someone’s life builds in a completely different trajectory because they experienced your unique form of creative expression.

We cannot afford to wait until something happens in our lives. We must charge ahead. The days you think you can’t or you’re not in the right mood, please, stay in that and create. When we freeze our darkest days in art, we allow others a safe place to do the same.

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