In Pursuit of Something Beautiful

Kitsilano Beach, 2023

It’s been weighing on me, this unfortunate realization I’ve been trying to push aside and tuck away somewhere beyond the reach of my awareness. Yet, even when I manage to forget about it, the feeling lingers, seeping into everything.

I haven’t shared my writing in months, despite the promise I made to myself that this year would be the year I moved past my anxieties and refused to let imposter syndrome, writer’s block, and the perceived lack of free time separate me from my craft. I cannot entirely blame writer’s block, although it does claim an unfortunate number of my words. Rather, as I’ve recently realized, it’s because the idea of sharing my work and being seen still has a way of making me feel physically ill.You see, I have ideas. They simply lie dormant, hiding in plain sight within Word documents, scribbled onto the buttersoft pages of colourful notebooks, and tucked deep within the folded creases of the odd sticky note or two. I have half-written stories, poems meant for another tongue, beautiful pieces camouflaged within hundreds of pages of words that may never be read.

But instead of revisiting these words, I’ve spent the past few months dabbling in other creative pursuits, exploring the lengths of my creativity while simply trying something else. I returned to sketching, a hobby I’d enjoyed during the pandemic. I spent days reading and scribbling thoughts into the margins of books. I played with watercolours and acrylic markers, and carried my camera around whenever inspiration struck. I enjoyed each of these art forms, and although they satisfied the creative in me, I couldn’t help by mourn my writing.

Over the past decade, I’ve restarted my writing journey more times than I wish to reveal. I’ve tried to create spaces for myself to share my writing freely, and each time, after doing exactly that for a little while, something inevitably stops me. I don’t entirely know what it is, but I can tell you what it feels like. It begins with no longer valuing my ideas. Soon my thoughts begin to feel incomplete, broken into pieces too jagged to put together. The uncertainty grows into overthinking that convinces me that whatever I’ve created isn’t good enough, until eventually, even the thought of writing makes me choke.

Anxious much? You’re telling me.

After spending days and nights mulling this over, I realized that much of this fear and uncertainty came down to feeling like I’m not good enough.

But what the hell does ‘good enough’ even mean?

Recently, I was explaining these feelings to my husband, only to realize that I’d unintentionally allowed the same fear and pessimism to colour so many of the things I enjoyed. I vented about how I felt inadequate at almost everything I tried. I enjoy running, but I’ve never run more than 10K. I play soccer weekly, but have days when I play like trash. I draw, but usually only for someone’s birthday card. I work out, but I’m not as fit as I’d like to be. I paint with watercolours, but rarely produce more than splashes on a page. I love photography, but only really shoot on vacation. I love writing, but I haven’t finished or shared a piece in months.

I took all my interests, the various facets of who I was, and haphazardly wrapped them into a box labelled sub-par. I felt defeated, sinking deeper into a well of self-doubt and cynicism, and with glazed eyes asked my husband, “If I’m not good at any of the things I love, then who am I?”

For one, I am fortunate to have a life partner who sees depths in me that I struggle to recognize in myself. My husband reminded me that I didn’t have to be any single one of those things, because I was already all of them.

He made me realize that I don’t reduce the identities of my loved ones to a singular attribute, so why do I insist on doing so to myself? Why do I have to run every day to be a runner? Why do I need a portfolio of beautiful drawings and paintings to be an artist? Why do I need to write at a particular frequency to call myself a writer? Why can’t I simply do the things I love, even when their presence in my life ebbs and flows, simply because I enjoy them?

Since when did participation and enjoyment begin to require mastery?

I began to think about how fortunate I am to live a life in which I’ve explored many different interests, rather than one in which I was too afraid to try anything at all. There is something wonderful about letting curiosity lead you towards new experiences, without knowing whether they’ll become lifelong passions or fleeting pleasures. And yet, somewhere along the way, I seem to have confused the joy of exploring something with the need to make something of it.

I have a tendency to become excited by the idea of creating something beautiful or starting something new. Only, rather than staying present, I let that excitement carry my mind too far ahead. I begin imagining how I could take something simple and wonderful and make it bigger, better, more extraordinary. How a scene could become a short story, or perhaps a novel. How a new creation could become a business idea. The ideas pour in, carrying all the expectations of success and none of the foundations needed to support them. Eventually, those expectations loom so large that they overshadow the very thing I once enjoyed, until I stop doing it altogether.

And while I’ve explored different ways of creating over the years, there’s one form I can never quite seem to let go of.

Writing.

No matter how many interests I pick up, put down, or return to, I find my way back to writing more than any other form of creativity. But unlike my other hobbies, there’s something deeply rooted in my love for writing that frightens me. I don’t dream of becoming a painter, a professional soccer player, or a marathoner. But somewhere deep within, no matter how much I play it down or dismiss it as silly, I do wish to become a writer. An author.

I want to create something truly special and share it with the world. I want to write stories that capture hearts, sentences that carry readers into new worlds and lives that they can explore only in their minds. I want to create something meaningful, something that might one day find its place in this magnificent world of literature I’ve loved for so long.

Within writing, there is a dream, a hope, an entire life I’ve tied even the smallest string of words to. And perhaps that’s why writing frightens me in a way my other creative pursuits don’t. When I sit down to turn my scattered thoughts into something worthy of sharing, the pleasure I find in writing freely and openly begins to disappear. What once felt like exploration becomes an exercise in proving that my ideas are good enough, that my words carry enough meaning, that I might actually have what it takes to become the writer I dream of being.

But what happens when the very desire to create something beautiful prevents you from finishing anything at all?

I’ve spent so much time worrying that I might not be capable of writing the kind of work I dream of creating that I’ve neglected the very work it takes to get there. Perhaps, for now, the point isn’t to write that magnificent piece. Perhaps, it’s to accept myself as the writer I am today, while giving myself the opportunity to become the writer I hope to be. To write freely, to return to my unfinished stories, to make sense of the collision of thoughts and threads of ideas, and to share them even while they are imperfect.

I still dream of writing something that moves another person, something that deserves a place among the stories I’ve loved. But I no longer want the fear of falling short of that dream to be the very thing that keeps me from pursuing it. Perhaps the point isn’t to create something perfect, but to love something enough to keep trying. To put our imperfect creations into the world, and still give them a chance to be seen as beautiful.