There’s something about creativity-the act of making something, of stepping into the unknown-that reaches further than we realize. It doesn’t just stay in the studio or on the stage. It moves. It connects. It ripples outward in ways we don’t always get to see.
I was listening to Amy Poehler interview Steve Carell on her podcast, and they started talking about bombing on stage-how failing in front of an audience feels a little less brutal when you’re doing it with someone else. There’s something strangely comforting about knowing you’re not alone in it.
Amy asked him what he liked about failing with a friend, and his answer has been living in my head ever since:
“I think it’s just throwing everything off of you… all of the worry, all of the concern of ‘this isn’t working’… Everybody gets sweaty. Everybody starts trying too hard. But sometimes when you can just allow it to kind of wash over you, the things that you might find are really interesting and embracing.”
Immediately, I thought about painting.
About how easy it is to grip too tightly. To overthink. To stand in front of a canvas and try to force something into existence because you think it should be working by now. And how quickly that pressure sucks the life out of the process.
But the moments that actually matter-the ones that lead somewhere real-are usually the ones where I stop fighting it. Where I let the awkward, frustrating, “this is not going well” phase happen. Where I loosen my grip just enough to let something unexpected come through.
It’s what I half-jokingly call “embracing the suck,” but there’s truth in it. Because on the other side of that discomfort is usually something more honest than anything I could have planned.
What struck me, too, is how comforting it is to hear people at the top of their craft talk about the same struggle. The same doubt. The same messy middle. It doesn’t go away-it just becomes something you learn to move with instead of against.
And maybe that’s the real skill: being willing to be a beginner again and again. To not know. To try anyway. To risk doing it imperfectly, sometimes even publicly.
That’s something we get more resistant to as we get older. We start to prefer predictability. Control. Outcomes we can count on.
But creativity doesn’t really live there.
It lives in the moments where things aren’t working. Where the outcome is unclear. Where you’re standing in that uncomfortable space between “this isn’t it” and “maybe this could be something.”
And here’s the part I keep coming back to:
Those chaotic, uncertain, not-quite-working beginnings? They don’t stay contained. They turn into something that reaches other people.
They become the song that makes someone feel less alone.
The scene that makes someone laugh when they needed it most.
The painting that stops someone mid-step and makes them exhale.
One person moving through discomfort-through doubt, through trying, through letting go-can create something that helps someone else feel seen.
That’s the ripple.
Art doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from showing up inside the uncertainty and staying long enough to see what emerges.
And somehow, that’s the very thing that ends up bringing us back to ourselves.
