You think that doubt is a remnant of ignorance. Something that only appears when you’re just starting out, because you still don’t have the tools. As if the unease that makes you step back a little every time you face a project were only a temporary symptom. A nuisance that will disappear once you’re “good.” Or, at least, once you feel that way.

You truly believe this, and that’s normal.

With the years you’ll improve, but not in the way you imagine. There won’t be a precise moment when you suddenly feel confident. What will happen instead is that what excites you today will, with time, seem merely adequate. Your taste will evolve at the same pace as you. And your idea of what an excellent project is will redefine itself again and again, drifting a little further away each time you think you’ve finally caught it.

You’ll realize that it’s not at all easy to find ideas that truly feel meaningful to you. And you’ll struggle to understand why, after so many years, it isn’t any simpler. And instead of being satisfied with having more experience, you’ll discover that the more you know, the more complex it becomes to create something that, for you, feels worth it.

No one will have warned you that the more experience you gather and the more things you’ve seen, the harder it will be to create something new. And even more, to surprise yourself with an idea that doesn’t vaguely remind you of something you already know.

Until one day—maybe on some random November morning, years from now, on a bus on your way to the studio—you’ll realize that everything is fine as it is. Because you’ll finally have reached a point where you understand and cherish the contradiction of someone who deeply loves her work, but who, every now and then, would also happily throw it all out the window.

And that will be the moment when you see everything differently. You’ll understand that if you hadn’t been the way you were—stubborn to the edge of what’s reasonable, difficult, absurdly demanding of yourself—you wouldn’t have made it this far. That if you hadn’t pushed yourself so much, if you hadn’t been so unsatisfied, so curious, so obsessed with improving, maybe you would have lived more peacefully, but also much further away from what you can now aspire to accomplish.

A hug from the H6,
Ingrid