Just start: on the discomfort of doing new things

Starting a new venture is always nerve-wracking.

Will anyone come?

Will anyone care?

Will this help anyone?

Is this going to be of any use to anyone at all?

It's seductively easy to put things off until some magical future time. Some point when we'll know more. When we'll have more time. When we'll be that much smarter. That much more polished. Our future selves– those mythical, talented, glossy, relaxed folks– they can take care of it.

To be fair, it's not useful or kind to put utter garbage out into the world. It's reasonable to want to create something worth sharing.

But wanting to create something really, really good can just as easily turn into just another excuse to put things off. Procrastination can so easily masquerade as perfectionism.

As Ira Glass so wisely put it:

All of us who do creative work… we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap... It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.

And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?

I share all this because I want you to know that I'm not launching Quiet Depth from the mountain top, filled with serene confidence. I'm excited about this project, I'm hopeful, I think it could be incredibly useful. And because of that hope, that idealism, I want it to be just so... perfect. Just so helpful. Just so polished. Just so ready for prime time.

And maybe one day it will be. But for now, I'm launching it. Getting the ball rolling. Pulling back the curtain. Asking the orchestra to start playing the overture.

Here we go.