Last week, I watched as a 60-something-year-old woman sat as part of a circle of friends and lowered her head. She spoke more like she was talking to her hands than to us. “I feel incompetent,” she said. Incompetent. It’s a remarkable word. All hard consonants, all little peaks and bits of breath. And it was a stunning choice in that moment, too. 

She sat with us on the mat of a martial arts dojo where we, stinking and sweaty and sucking air, reflected on the day’s practice: our challenges, our successes, our realizations. “I feel incompetent,” she said. I marveled at the selection of the word, because I’ve been there too. Being new to something. Feeling like you don’t get it, will never get it, won’t have the chops or the time to get it. I thought about what words and phrases I might have put there, too, in my clumsy attempt to access her feelings.

Incapable, perhaps.

Unable. 

I can’t do this. 

Or hell, just maybe I’m done. 

But incompetent? What an absolute unit of a word.

When we were done with class and getting ready to leave, I asked her if I could give her a hug – for her honesty, for her vulnerability, and for the gift of that word. 

In an instant, she’d subverted my whole understanding of how it meant to feel down in the dumps about our endeavors, our interests, and our journeys. I drove home, my back sweaty and stuck to the seat while I chewed on that word, spelled it out, examined how it felt on my tongue and lips and just past my teeth. Incompetent. Four syllables. Incompetent. 

“How many times have I absolutely hated what’s staring back at me on that page, or deleted a sentence or a paragraph in frustration.”

How many times as a writer have I felt like absolute shit about myself? About the process, about the labor of it all: the creating, the editing, the querying, the beta’ing, the revisions. How many times have I absolutely hated what’s staring back at me on that page, or deleted a sentence or a paragraph in frustration. How many times have I cussed out the screen, or literally waved two middle fingers at my keyboard, like that would somehow make the words come easier. Art – or attempts at art – don’t have to be all suck and suffering, of course, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem like most of the time is spent in some sort of state of doubt, disgust, or upheaval. That’s writing, I guess. That’s creating. Guess we’re doomed to do that over and over until we die. 

Or are we?

What my friend at the dojo didn’t realize was that, to me, her careful selection of words demonstrated a bounty of compassion for herself and for her discovery of a new skill. To feel isn’t always to be. There was admission in her words, but there was also a stalwart and powerful refusal to define herself with that anger and displeasure at the art, too. Though discomfort isn’t a surefire factory for progress in anything – in writing, in martial arts, in any kind of creativity – it’s rarely the demon we can make it to be, either. Even now writing this, I find myself grating my teeth against the urge to say I’m incapable of being able to put into words my own feelings about her expression. So in this moment, I feel incompetent. 

It’s okay to just feel incompetent.

Whether for wristlocks or semicolons, there are a thousand guides and how-tos and answers out there. There are yappers and lip-flappers who tell you that good writing comes from discipline and repetition and ritual and habit, and sure, those play a part – in an ideal world.

But ours is not an ideal world. Ours are not ideal lives. We’re writers and artists, sure, but we’re some of us children with ailing parents; we’re some of us parents, tired as hell and covered in spit-up; we’re kiddo chauffeurs; we’re nine-to-fivers at home or at the workplace, paying assloads of bills and figuring out our way from one week to the next; we’re some of us financially strapped and emotionally compromised; we’re some of us trying to figure out how to have a happy existence with bags under our eyes and headlines that tell us there are governments and politicians who see us as less-than. 

And on top of that, we’re supposed to create. On top of that, we’re supposed to write with joy and whimsy and willingness. We’re supposed to market and produce and do taxes and promote and promote and promote. 

Sometimes that feels like too tall an order, so if you ever need permission, here it is:

Be not-all-that-great at something. Be a beginner at it forever. Feel incompetent.

Say it aloud. I feel incompetent. 

Despite your best efforts, mastery will sneak up on you one day, and I’d put money on this: you will feel no different than you do now.