I don’t know what this is yet…

There is a strange pressure to know what something is before you begin.

To have the elevator pitch.

The mission statement.

The five-year plan.

The beautifully organized Instagram grid where everything looks like it was inevitable.

I do not have that.

What I have is a feeling.

A persistent, slightly annoying feeling that I am supposed to be making something.

Or maybe changing something.

Or maybe finally giving myself permission to make something bigger than the box I originally put it in.

And if I am being completely transparent, I find that terrifying.

Because changing your mind in private is easy.

Changing your mind where other people can see you do it is something else entirely.

Suddenly there are witnesses.

People who knew the old version.

People who followed you for one thing.

People who might wonder why you are suddenly talking about something different.

And, of course, the imaginary audience in your head asking:

What exactly are you doing?

Excellent question.

I don't completely know yet.

The Little Joys Started With Art

The Little Joys of Art started because I love art.

That part hasn't changed.

I love making things.

I love museums.

I love art history.

I love finding strange connections between something made hundreds of years ago and something happening in my life on an otherwise completely ordinary Tuesday.

I love noticing things.

A ridiculous facial expression in a Renaissance painting.

Ancient marks scratched into stone.

A landscape that looks impossible.

A dog sitting in a pose that somehow makes her look like an Egyptian sphinx.

The things humans make—and the things humans notice—tell us something about who we are.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that maybe that is the part I am actually obsessed with.

Not only art.

People.

Stories.

Bodies.

Work.

Identity.

Change.

Humor.

Grief.

Joy.

The ridiculous things we do to belong.

The things we survive.

The versions of ourselves we leave behind.

The tiny moments that somehow explain something much bigger.

Art was never really separate from any of that.

Art is one of the ways we have been trying to make sense of being human since we figured out we could leave a handprint on a wall.

Maybe The Little Joys of Art isn't becoming something completely different.

Maybe I am finally understanding what it was about all along.

But What If I Get It Wrong?

This is where things get uncomfortable.

Because I would love to tell you that I have reached some enlightened stage of adulthood where I fearlessly pursue whatever interests me without caring what anyone thinks.

I have not.

Trying something new still brings up the same deeply sophisticated thoughts it always has:

What if I'm terrible at this?

What if nobody cares?

What if people think this is weird?

What if I spend a year building something and it goes absolutely nowhere?

And my personal favorite:

Who exactly do I think I am?

That one is particularly effective.

Because failure becomes much scarier when the thing you're trying actually matters to you.

If I try something I don't care about and it fails, fine.

But art?

Writing?

Storytelling?

Talking about bodies and identity and work and all the strange things humans carry around with them?

Those things feel closer to the bone.

And there is something deeply vulnerable about saying:

I think I might have something to say.

Not because you believe you have all the answers.

But because you have questions you can't stop thinking about.

The Messy Middle

I think we spend a lot of time celebrating beginnings and endings.

We love the before-and-after.

The new job.

The finished painting.

The weight lost.

The business launched.

The renovation revealed.

The big announcement where someone says, "After months of working behind the scenes…"

But I am increasingly interested in the part before that.

The messy middle.

The part where you don't really know what you're doing yet.

Where your ideas contradict each other.

Where you try something and hate it.

Where you change your mind.

Where something you were once certain about stops fitting.

Where you have grown enough to recognize that the person who made your original plan isn't quite the same person standing here now.

There isn't usually a dramatic soundtrack for that part.

Sometimes you just wake up one morning and realize:

I don't think I want the same things anymore.

Or:

I still want this. I just want it differently.

That distinction feels important.

Because changing doesn't always mean rejecting the life you built before.

Sometimes it means expanding it.

Maybe Changing Your Mind Isn't Failure

I have been thinking a lot lately about how much we reward consistency.

Pick a lane.

Build a brand.

Develop expertise.

Stay focused.

There is value in that.

But humans aren't brands.

We're supposed to change.

We're supposed to encounter things that rearrange us.

We're supposed to discover interests we didn't know we had.

We're supposed to have experiences that make the old plan impossible to follow exactly as written.

Maybe the goal isn't to create one perfect version of ourselves and spend the rest of our lives protecting it.

Maybe we're supposed to keep becoming.

Which is inconvenient.

But also kind of wonderful.

So Here I Am

I still want to make art.

I want to write.

I want to tell stories.

I want to talk to people about the things that changed them.

I want to explore our complicated relationships with our bodies, our careers, our creativity, our expectations, and each other.

I want to look backward at art and history and sideways at popular culture and directly at the strange experience of being alive right now.

I want to make things that are beautiful.

And funny.

And occasionally uncomfortable.

I want to make room for conversations where someone reads something and thinks:

Oh.

Me too.

I don't know yet whether all of that becomes essays or interviews or art or a podcast or talks or some combination of things I haven't thought of yet.

And for once, I am trying not to make that uncertainty a problem I have to solve immediately.

Maybe I can just begin.

Maybe we can figure it out along the way.

A Little Joy

So perhaps this is the first Little Joy I want to offer in this new chapter:

You are allowed to become curious about a different version of your life.

You are allowed to change your mind.

You are allowed to outgrow an idea without disrespecting the person who originally had it.

You are allowed to try something before you know whether you will be good at it.

You are allowed to make something simply because you cannot stop wondering what might happen if you do.

And yes.

It might fail.

Some of the things I try probably will.

But staying exactly the same because I am afraid someone might watch me get it wrong feels like its own kind of failure.

So I'm trying something.

I don't completely know what it is yet.

But I think that's the point.

Welcome to whatever comes next. welcome to the messy middle.

Until the next, joy walker