“I had read in books that art was not easy, but no one warned that the mind repeats its ignorance, the vision of others. I am a still a black swan on alien waters.” -Ern Malley, “The Darkening Ecliptic”
There are days the struggle with imposter syndrome is real…that feeling that you aren’t really qualified for pretty much anything you’re doing. Work, motherhood, life. There are days that the weight of ‘when will someone notice I’m faking it?’ is heavy, and you just wait for the house of cards you’ve painstakingly built to come tumbling down when just one observant person chooses to exhale in your direction. Day in and day out, you watch the tower sway slightly from left to right, as you place new cards against old ones, reinforcing the walls, hoping that a new lesson learned, or experience had, helps to strengthen the overall structure…but you worry about the cards at the very top. The ones you can’t quite reach to reinforce. You double check the weather and hold your own breath. God forbid your own exhale be what brings the house down.
I think the secret to overcoming this is realizing that almost no one knows what they are doing. There’s this assumption that at some point, some people get to a certain level in life and actually do have their shit together and know the answers and how to solve all the problems. They know the exact right way to execute everything. It feels as if they have so much experience that they can predict the future. They can’t. They may have more experience, and their pool of wisdom to pull from may be a bit deeper, but they don’t know the answer. They don’t have the ‘right way’. We are all just making this shit up as we go. We are, essentially, all imposters. Some of us just worry about the ‘exhalers’, and some of us don’t.
There’s a saying people use in corporate America: ‘It’s OK to fail, just ‘fail fast’. The idea being that fuck ups happen, but let’s do it quickly, figure it out, and move on, because we don’t really have the time to not get it right. It’s idealistic. It’s unrealistic. It’s supposed to sound supportive. It doesn’t.
The human variable is capitalisms biggest challenge. As a woman in business, or person, (this isn’t a feminist statement), I can attest to the fact that people will do what people will do- regardless of what you tell them or how many policies you put in place. And those policies are put in place by people with only a portion of the story that encompasses, with luck, the majority of the potential outcomes. It doesn’t take into account the 20% that will be impacted by variables – usually human imposed variables. There’s no such thing as “one right way”.
I see this all the time as I work with our Research & Development and Manufacturing teams, as we develop products, then make them, on repeat, with the same specifications and running conditions, and sometimes they just come out differently. Sometimes it’s a human element. Sometimes it’s an environmental one. Sometimes I think our plant is haunted.
Either way, we really, really want there to be ONE right way, and there just isn’t. Theres a ‘right way’ in this condition and a ‘right way’ in that condition, and a right way if ‘John’ is on the schedule and a right way if ‘Emily’ is, even though there shouldn’t be. Because there’s a human interpretation and ‘hand’ to everything. – Especially if ‘Casper’s’ stopped by, playing tricks. (That material usually gets scrapped) … Everything in life is a little bit of an art form. (It’s unbelievably frustrating when you’re trying to sell it).
But, sometimes, the unknowns are how new things are discovered. Sometimes the ‘mistake’ is how a new masterpiece is made. Sometimes, that slight differentiation or change in use is what makes something average truly great.
Silly Putty was discovered when trying to create a rubber to repair boots and tank tire treads. It doesn’t fill holes of a tank tread, but it has amused children for decades.
Play Doh was originally invented to clean the soot off wallpaper from coal-burning stoves and fireplaces. Once those became obsolete, it was re-marketed as the kids craft we know today.
The color Mauve was first discovered in dye form when a chemist was attempting to create a cure for Malaria, failed but created a new ink color for the world of fashion.
Penicillin was discovered when a lab technician didn’t clean his petri dish out before leaving for vacation, saving millions of lives over the past 96 years.
Great things are often discovered from ‘failures’ and innovation happens when art and science intersect.
Violet really wants to be a good artist. She will find tutorials on how to draw online and copy’s the pictures. Striving for exact. If I draw a flower, she will tell me she wants to be a better artist than I am someday (I’m not that great of an artist) and gets frustrated when her flower doesn’t look exactly like mine. Trying to explain to her that no two flowers are ever the same doesn’t seem to resonate with her just yet. Explaining that art is exactly that, its art. Individual expression – it shouldn’t ever look exactly like someone else’s, doesn’t really make her feel better. She wants it to look like the picture. She believes that’s the ‘right way’. She’s focused on the lines of the petals, not the spirit of the flower.
As I scrolled through pictures of her year in preparation for this piece, I realized my favorite pictures of Violet are always the candid ones. They seem to capture her spirit. They aren’t the ones you typically frame, but probably should be. They are the ones that grab the sparkle in her eyes, her joy, the ones of her leaning her head on a friend’s shoulder or laying on the dog while watching TV. The ones where you see her smile from her eyes vs. her lips, like she would in a posed picture. The ones where you see her beam with pride, or sometimes even catch a glimpse of sadness, as this is where you can see her true empathy show through. The pictures where you see her beautiful heart, not just her pretty face.
When we really think about it, I bet most of our favorite pictures of others are the candid ones, we just tend to like the posed ones of ourselves better. To capture someone’s spirit with the camera is often a rare sighting and when you do, we should probably make a habit of framing it, but we are also often too focused on the lines of the picture vs. the spirit of the face and it doesn’t seem ‘right’ enough to frame.
That got me thinking about how much we reward and encourage perfection and glaze over everything else. We scroll past the pictures where people aren’t looking at the camera, instead of zooming in to see their expression, see the beauty in the fact that we captured a moment.
We correct spelling and grammar on an assignment and often, despite the writing, an average grade is given, regardless of the creative thought behind the message, because not all the rules were followed, and that message wasn’t expressed in the ‘right way.’ Yes, learning to write properly is important, I don’t discount that, but sometimes we allow those imperfections to stifle potential greatness. We kill the spirit trying to get it ‘right’, and in the situation of her ‘failed flower’, the possibilities of what that flower could have become, are gone. Maybe that flower wasn’t meant to be a flower in the end at all. The world will never know.
There isn’t one ‘right’ way. There isn’t always data that can predict the future, and you can only use measurements to get you so far until assumptions need to be made, accommodations for human interpretation and ‘hand’ need to be accepted and examined more closely. Sometimes your inexperience in something allows you to see that flower through a new eyes, with fresh perspective and you can see the spirit of the surroundings and you may not get that petal exact, but that may create space on the page to draw a bunny, which sparks the idea for a story, and a full book of illustrations with flowers and creatures of all kinds. Like capturing a candid photo at that rare moment, you may unveil the spirit of something bigger, better, more meaningful.
There isn’t one ‘right way’. Trying to condition oneself out of a lifetime of teachings is tough, but as I sometimes struggle with days of imposter syndrome, I’m trying to remind myself that change and greatness rarely happens when things go exactly to plan, that no one has it all figured out, and if the flower is drawn correctly is based more on what else you do with the page, and less on the shape of the petals.
Violet,
As you struggle to find your ‘thing’, remember that you will likely have many and they will change over the years. Your interests will come and go, but your innate talents, passion and who you are, are truly endless if you allow them to be. You already have something not everyone does, and that’s your ability to light up a room. Your spirit is contagious and will take you far as you learn to channel it. Put that energy into your work, build your house of cards high amongst the masses of paper homes, for very few are made of anything stronger. Find your passion and worry less about perfection and more about quality, creativity, and ingenuity. When the wind blows, and your tower sways, remember that if it falls, you have more cards to rebuild with than you did when you started, and you will rebuild it stronger and faster the 2nd time. Remember to breath. Exhale often and others won’t have the chance to blow over your deck, because you will already know your structure can handle the breeze. Make whatever you are doing yours, because as Thomas Edison once said “…I have not failed, I’ve only found 1000 ways that it won’t work…” but maybe one of those ways will turn into something great and someday hang in the Louvre.
Happy 8th Birthday to me beautiful, spirited artist. I am so proud of you.
Love,
Mom
“Do not become a slave to your model” – Vincent Van Goh
Enjoy Life; Eat Candy 