Suck Now. But Not Suck Later.

“I’m one of these people that thinks that everybody has certain gifts when they’re born. Not everybody goes through the trouble of trying to figure out just what they are.” -Bob Dylan

“If you haven’t learned how to do something, the people who have may seem to be magicians, possessors of mysterious secrets. But they are not. In any complex art such as house-keeping, piano-playing, clothes-making, or story-writing, there are so many techniques, skills, choices of method, so many variables, that you can learn them only by methodical, repeated, long-continued practice—in other words, by work…Nothing I know about how I learned to do the things I am good at doing leads me to believe that there are ‘secrets’ to the piano or the sewing machine or any other art I’m no good at. There is just the obstinate, continuous cultivation of a disposition, leading to skill in performance.” -Ursula Le Guin

“The key thing is to force yourself through the work it takes to force the skills to come. That’s the hardest phase…Your problem is you’re trying to judge all these things in the abstract before you do them. And that’s your tragic mistake. I mean it’s not a satisfying answer to hear that you just have to get in there and do things, but in fact it’s the only really honest answer that anybody would give you who’s done it…You just have to push very, very hard on things before they get to be good. And yourself as well.” -Ira Glass talking to students about creating This American Life

Maybe you suck at the thing now. But if you love the thing, and you put in the work over a long enough period of time, you won’t suck later.

So, do you love it enough to go through the suck?

P.S. H/t to the always excellent Billy Oppenheimer for inspiring this post.