I’ve never considered myself an artist, but I resonated with the line that said, ‘We leave drawings unfinished and stories unwritten. We do work that does not feel like our own. We repeat ourselves. We stop before we have mastered our materials, or continue long after their potential is exhausted.’ Often, I find myself starting a project or learning a craft but never progressing beyond a basic level. I have always attributed this habit to not having found what suits me or simply being interested in too many things. However, I have also recognized a lingering ‘fear’ associated with it.
I have wrongly believed that anything I create must be brilliant and admired by everyone. This misguided belief, coupled with the fear of realizing I lack the ‘genius’ described by Bayles and Orland, has prevented me from pushing past the basics. The discussion of fatalism as a form of fear resonated with me deeply—a fear that suggests our fates are in our hands, but our hands are weak. This understanding of fatalism spoke to me, as it aligns with my own experiences.
Though I don’t consider myself an artist, I still experience these sentiments or rather feelings. That is why I understand the concept of linking the self to the idea of being an artist, as explained in this chapter