I'd rather be fully expressed and mediocre than closeted and choked.

Art used to be the finished piece....now I'm wondering if its the **staying** when you don’t feel chosen.

Photo by Melania Matacena on Unsplash

I can’t tell you how much I used to beat myself up when things didn’t just come naturally to me. How deeply I took that as proof my inadequacy.

I’ve always had dreams of being the next best thing - - call that conceited, I don’t care…it’s honest and honestly, has anyone’s dream ever been being mediocre?

Acting, playing instruments, painting and writing were interests I was drawn to, but bounced from one to the next looking for which “zone of genius” would be my jack-in-the-box moment - - the turn of the dial that made my prize appear.

But side-by-side with my ambition, also came my downfall - - the thing that stopped me before I ever got started - - the expectation that any efforts towards said interests had to show “promise of excellence” immediately.

If I wasn’t great at something right away, I internalized that as not having what it took to reach the levels I aspired to. So why bother trying?

I believed that was how people arrived into their artistic calling…that brilliance just flowed magically from them, fully formed.

That every brushstroke, every typewriter letter that tap-tap-tapped was perfect the first time. That a singer just opened their mouth one day and the anthem of a decade came alive.

Instant gratification - The mark of true genius.

So I never progressed beyond an unending cycle of disappointment and failure - - all feeding my belief about not being good enough. Not having what it took.

So I tried giving up.

I tried convincing myself artistic aspirations didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. That there were more important things in life to focus on than whether or not I ever sold a story, song or still life.

I called it “putting myself out of my misery”.

But the call never went away. It just manifested as a discontent that I couldn’t quell.

No one ever really talks about what happens when that part of you goes dormant. The grief cannot be contained and it doesn’t stay quiet.

It turns sideways in places meant to stay upright.

Eventually, I recognized what I was holding. I realized that trying to fill, what I thought was an empty hole, was actually ready to burst from years of suppression, and could only be remedied by undoing the plug. By getting everything I’d been holding hostage inside of me out.

So that became a good enough place to start. I didn’t care (well, I cared a lot less) about my results and decided to focus on doing.

Building the habit of “the work”.

I started studying the work of artists I admired. Got interested in their history, their story - what led them to become who we know them to be now.

Van Gogh was hated for his art when he was alive. But he couldn’t stop. His need to express his creativity drove him to manic and depressive episodes.

Picasso had to start somewhere, and seeing that journey in his museum in Barcelona helped me follow that first hand.

I also found some less famous artists, people who felt more accessible to me, and I followed their work.

One called himself “a copywriter moonlighting as a poet.” One sentiment he kept stating over and over, his claim to fame, was that he was never chasing “marketing”. His goal as a human was to be a better “creative”. His creative expression trumped any success he had with his copywriting. In fact he credited much of his success there to his skills as creative writer.

His career started by listening to books while working odd jobs, absorbing information on the “How To’s”. But what stood out the most was that after his “9-5”, he’d open up his laptop and write like it was his religion. For hours.

Another famous author, who gathers crowds of paying people to come and listen to him read aloud, lamented about how often people will come up to him after his show and express their desire to become a writer.

He’d ask them how often they wrote and the most common response was “Every now and again, definitely not everyday.”. His reaction was genuine confusion - - he couldn’t understand how someone would express their heart’s desire but have nothing to show in the pursuit of it.

Looking back, it’s such an obvious observation. And yet how many of us never see it that way?

Lainey Wilson, a country music star, is famous for saying “If you’re gonna be a dreamer, you better be a doer.”

I could go on.

These ideas started stacking up. Finally started clicking. And then, they started to sting.

My desire to be known for something has never died, in fact, as I get older, it just gets stronger. Having big dreams was never my problem but the biggest piece I was missing was the “doing”. The messy, chaotic, “this is crap” kinda doing.

Finally, I absorbed the message that talent is mostly a skill to be cultivated. Not an innate ability granted to a special few.

Doing my work hasn’t been the easiest path to travel...I’ve had a lifetime of conditioning gunk and worthiness soot to loosen, sift and excavate. It’s an on-going process.

But I’ve realized that the identities we wrestle with, owning or disrobing, the emotions we’re consumed by but pretend aren’t there, the truth about what we want vs. what actually is - - That’s where art that’s remembered actually comes from. And it’s the piece that most of us skip over because it hurts before it heals.

I’ve decided that I’d rather be fully expressed and mediocre than closeted and choked, waiting for perfection.

Genius isn’t the absence of friction. It’s the willingness to stay in it.

Talent isn’t what spills out perfectly the first time, it’s what survives our own doubt long enough to get better.

The artists I admired weren’t marked by magic. They were marked by obsession. By devotion. By repetition. By the refusal to interpret early awkwardness as disqualification.

I’ve learned that the grief, the conditioning, the soot - - that isn’t in the way of the work.

It is the work. That tension is the raw material, because expression isn’t something bestowed. It’s something earned through paint stained fingers and keyboards with faded letters.

If you’re going to be a dreamer, you don’t just have to be a doer. You have to be someone willing to be bad, publicly or privately, long enough to become honest.

At least that’s where I’m headed. Word by word…doubt by doubt.

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Hey. I’m Alyssa - a writer + Creative Strategist exploring language as infrastructure to reclaim and build lives we enjoy living more. Thanks for being here.