Skip to main content

A Word to the Wise on Wednesday

Today, I read an interview about "Creating Art, Feeling Weak and Getting Over It."

Timely, to say the least.

I particularly liked this quote:

Honestly, your trials and tribulations are just stories to other people. They like hearing those stories and they’re rooting for you. For the most part, to win, and they like hearing even when you don’t win because it’s part of the story. So what I try to do more now, is share when I am in trouble because it’s interesting to people. I’m one of those people that tends to put their head down and just does it. So I’ve tried to stop and say, “Here’s my problem.” Surprisingly, people will say, “Let me help you with that.”

I could have been more open about what was going on when it was really personally scary...but I always thought that people would see me as weak if I opened up. But really what they’re seeing is “Wow. This man is taking a risk. That’s cool. I wish I had the guts to do that.” Failure has entertainment value. Not all stories end happily and in the middle there’s supposed to be challenge and distress.
And then my friend Laura sent me this article, "How to be awesome at everything."

The secret to being awesome at everything is having the courage to be horrible at first.

That’s it. If you want to be awesome at something, you just need to be brave enough to be horrible at it first.The fear of being horrible is actually what keeps most people from ever being awesome at everything.

This is exactly what I need to hear. I hate being horrible at things and I hate failing and I hate the possibility that I might let people down. But I need to be willing to let those things happen.

Ugh. More thoughts/questions to possibly come.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thi...

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro...

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st...