I drew a lot growing up and around age 12 started believing that it was something I was good at, the assumed capability for being a certain age was something I seemed to overstep often according to those around me. Seeing a genuine reaction to having broken someone’s unspoken expectation felt weird to me. I never knew how to react. That kind of attention felt strange to me because I had this deep held thought that wasn't something that I was raised to have they way I did — I genuinely believed that everyone was born with the same set of abilities and that you had to unlock each of them one at a time carefully.. That no one could be better than anyone else but you could always spend more time in the excavation process to get the depth you want.
I couldn’t internalize my own creativity easily because I believed in that more than most things I had to learn. I wish I had been able to speak on that train of thought as early as it came to me... I see now more and more how I could have encouraged others around me. Seeing someone give up or lose confidence when they see you create something seemingly effortlessly and say “I could never do that, I suck at this, why am I even trying”. Anything I’ve ever done creatively I started with that same “I can’t do this” feeling but I had to look at what I did have (even if it wasn’t a lot) and see it as enough to get a little bit closer to that impossible thing, that impossible dream project or hefty discipline.
You really have to break things down into small enough pieces that you can handle with where you are to get to where you want to be or do what you dream of doing no matter how small it is, it’s still a building block. I remember being at home at age 4 and I had this sudden determination to learn to draw a perfect heart in a day no matter how much of that time it took me.. I spent hours of the morning, afternoon and evening filling pages of a notebook until I could get it right.. During the last hour or so before my other parent got home I remember feeling sad that I couldn’t accomplish my one and only mission for myself that day and gave myself a few last tries. And on one of the last tries I remember letting something go in myself..
I felt myself ease up once I was content with having tried my best even if i couldn’t do it. A few moments later I watched myself finally crank out a symmetrical heart and it was the wildest feeling... I drew a few more to make sure it actually happened and they were exactly what I hoped they would look like earlier that morning. — Every time I hit a wall looking for an idea or visual that feels right, that’s exactly what I feel again. That hit of joy after coming out of an impossible problem in the moment or a perceived dead end. Those moments mean a lot every time and I take a lot out of from them.