living with fear

After coming out of depression, there was the fear of taking a step forward.

There have been times when I was so worn down that I could not even read code. But I have fulfilled my responsibilities as an engineer, so I believe I cannot simply be incapable of doing it. Even so, that first step toward making art is terribly frightening to me.

It took me a while to understand this. I was completely convinced that I was just lazy, and I grew frustrated with the days when I tried to motivate myself but still took no action. I even thought it might be a problem that could be fixed by increasing my medication.

I need to face my fears, accept them, and learn to live with them. They keep bubbling up endlessly. There is no way to make them disappear.

Talent

Talent undoubtedly exists. My own experience proves that to me. Everyone has felt differences in ability somewhere—in sports, in games, in competence at work, or in the small disparities that appear throughout ordinary life.

The strength of the hand you are dealt matters, but it is not something you can do much about. You are supposed to make the most of it, not turn it into a shackle.

Talent is nothing more than an express ticket. There are still people with talent who never produce anything. What the world ultimately sees is not their talent. It sees the finished work, and nothing else. No matter how much you suffered or how easily it came to you, if nothing gets made, no one is going to care.

In other words, talent does not decide whether you make something. The only way forward is to move yourself. Of course, I am not denying that talent can affect how good the result is.

Artists improve by refining the skills they already have and by learning new ones.

They improve by learning how to make things, and by learning from the things they have made.

Living in the real world is nothing more than accumulating one day after another. I am the one who has to move myself forward, and I am also the one who bears responsibility for doing so.

Vision

Your eye develops quickly. You can imagine the ideal. That is precisely why reality fails to match what you want.

This is a natural condition. The ideal is always ahead of reality. It is not evidence that you lack talent.

In your head, you can clearly hear a much better performance. Your fingers simply cannot produce it yet. Being able to see the gap between your ideal and your current ability is not itself a failure. In fact, because you can see the gap, you can also see what you need to learn next.

If you cannot play a certain phrase, it does not mean you lack talent. You can easily picture yourself playing it, but your ability has not caught up with that vision yet. The ideal is always ahead of your present skill.

If talent is not the problem, then why can’t you do it?

Because making art is not that easy.

Gap

Making art inevitably creates a gap between what you intended to do and what you actually did, and it gives you feedback about that gap with almost offensively brutal accuracy.

Picking up a brush, imagining a painting like Picasso, and actually painting one are entirely different things. The finished result—and many moments throughout the process—can hurt.

Holding a guitar and playing a Jimi Hendrix phrase are also entirely different things. The pain in your fingers is nothing compared with the emptiness and helplessness of realizing that you cannot do what you want to do.

When suffering arrives, what matters is whether you continue making things anyway.

Everyone suffers in much the same way. You do not have to turn the pain of fear and anxiety into a reason to quit. You just keep going.

You can simply observe the suffering.

“So, I’m suffering right now.”

There may be no way to conquer suffering once and for all. Everyone would rather drown themselves in pleasure. Even so, suffering is unavoidable. You have to accept that this is part of the deal and learn how to live alongside it.

Fear is cunning. It appears in forms that interfere with making things: laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with your materials or working environment, distraction by other people’s achievements, and countless other disguises.

Those who confront their fear keep making things.

Those who do not, quit.

Conclusion

A sane person would accept that the best they can do at any particular moment is simply the best they can do at that moment. And almost nobody is that sane.

We all get crushed somewhere between the ideal and reality. It is frightening, and it hurts.

Even so, instead of worrying about whether you have talent, make something. If you make things, you can learn. If you learn, you can get better. The fact that something is difficult is not proof that you lack talent.

Do you envy a fish for having gills? An ability that belongs to someone else exists because they need it for what they do. That does not mean you need it too.