Most of my creative life has started the same way.
I was terrible.
Not a little rough. Not “needs polish.”
Truly, fully, unmistakably incapable.
And that has turned out to be one of my greatest strengths.
Starting Where You Are Not Qualified
My first professional job was as a water skier at SeaWorld.
Here’s the part people don’t expect: I went to a dance audition.
I wasn’t a competitive skier. I wasn’t trained for the role I ended up in. I simply showed up, open and willing, and learned on the job.
Later, I went on tour dancing for Sesame Street Live having never once danced inside a giant costume.
Anyone who has done it knows. It is hot, disorienting, heavy, and nothing like dancing in a studio. You can’t see properly. Your peripheral vision is gone. Everything is muffled and slower than you expect.
At my very first Sesame Street Live show, I destroyed an entire scrim of lighting because I couldn’t see where I was going.
The show went on.
No one died.
The audience had no idea.
I learned very quickly where not to walk.
The First Attempts Are Always Awful
My first quilts were terrible.
Points didn’t line up.
Tension was off.
Nothing lay flat.
My first mugs were heavy and clunky. Too thick. Awkward handles. They did not want to be held.
The first costumes I made?
They fell apart.
Seams split. Closures failed. Things broke at the worst possible moment.
There was no romantic “finding my calling” phase. There was just doing the work badly until I could do it better.
Radical Incapability Is a Requirement
Here’s what all of those beginnings had in common:
I was willing to be bad at something long enough to learn.
That is what most people avoid.
They wait to feel ready.
They wait to feel qualified.
They wait until they can imagine success clearly.
But you cannot think your way into competence.
You have to work your way there.
Every skill I now carry with confidence was once an embarrassment. Every finished piece I’m proud of is built on a pile of early attempts that did not work.
That is not a failure of talent.
That is how learning happens.
Start Before You Feel Ready
If you are waiting to try something new until you feel capable, you will wait forever.
Everyone who is good at something now was once radically incapable.
They just kept going.
So start.
Start clumsy.
Start unsure.
Start with the wrong tools and the wrong expectations.
Make the ugly quilt.
Throw the heavy mug.
Sew the seam that doesn’t hold.
Walk straight into the wrong thing once or twice.
Then do it again.
And again.
And one day, without ceremony, you will realize you are no longer new.
Beginners Are Radical
I’ve learned to respect beginners.
They are brave.
They are honest.
They are willing to stand at the very beginning and say, “I don’t know how to do this yet.”
That is where everything worthwhile starts.
So if something has been tugging at you, a craft, a skill, a dream, don’t wait until you feel capable.
Be radically incapable.
Start anyway.