The crowd of crappy creators

Seriously, what were they thinking? They should have fired the lead designer on this project. (The Smithsonian Institution)

For so long, I didn’t create things on a consistent basis.

All I did was look at other stuff and get frustrated with how bad it was.

Bad music, bad Instagram posts, bad YouTube videos. You name it, I judged it.

I even judged other people for liking it. “Why does this person have so many followers?”

Seeing all that stuff I didn’t like made me shy away from making my own stuff. It was easier to just slink away and shut out the world, like the lonely, misunderstood monster from a children’s story.

In judging other people’s work so harshly, I was setting up impossible circumstances for myself. My pattern of criticism boxed me into a corner. It meant that, were I to make something, I would have to do better than these other people.

But then, my work was not likely to compare favorably. Just starting out, I wasn’t going to get as many views as more established creators, regardless of quality. Plus, with my haughty attitude toward other creators and their audiences, I was probably going to project some unpleasant vibes that would turn people off.

Thus, I was stuck for a long time, longing to embrace a life of making things and sharing them but fearful of judgment and resentful of the others who had the nerve to put their crappy work out there.

At some point, this changed. It makes a better story to tell you why and how it changed, but I don’t remember, exactly. I think that what happened was that I gradually got over myself.

I realized that I had it backward: The crappy creators weren’t gatekeepers. They weren’t evidence that only the bad work gets rewarded and good work must be forever veiled in darkness. And they weren’t reducing the opportunities for others.

No, it was just the opposite: All of these people were proof that if I wanted to make stuff, it didn’t have to be that great. The threshold to finding an appreciative audience was actually low. There were plenty of options for all kinds of tastes, and there was tons of room for everyone.

All of the content that made me feel sad inside was actually a cheerful invitation to go ahead and try making something. To join the crowd of crappy creators.

The world wasn’t waiting for me. The world was saying, “Jump in! The water’s fine!”

It is pretty cool, when you think about it, that any of us can hit publish whenever we want to. That doesn’t mean that others have an obligation to look at our work any more than we have an obligation to all of the other people hitting publish on their mediocre offerings. It just means that we don’t have to be trapped by our own or anyone else’s standards. We can play, experiment, learn, and do it again.

Now, when I see someone else’s article I don’t want to read, I just don’t read it. I don’t wring my hands about it. There’s no implication that I then should not bother writing. There is no karmic circle in which my unwillingness to read Sheila’s blog means that Diane isn’t going to read my blog. We all get to do whatever we want to do, which includes making and/or consuming what we want, with no expectation that we are owed anything in return.

I don’t have to be good to justify publishing. Neither does anyone else. That notion has been extremely freeing. No matter what other people do, I can make what I want to make and play where I want to play. If you like it, great. If not, that’s okay. Maybe, if you set your mind to it, you can give us something even worse. I dare you!