Earlier this week, I did something a little scary. Like, I actually felt physical fear: stomach clenched, tunnel vision, the whole thing.
So what did I do? I took the plunge and bought an Apple iPad Pro. I know that I am lucky that this is the kind of experience eliciting fear in my life. It is also objectively a big investment of my family’s limited resources. This is all to say, I feel some pressure to make good use of the thing.
My hope is to use this device to make beautiful digital lettering and designs. But…I am not good at it yet. I am not even as good at it as I am at drawing with a paper and pencil. The space between what I want to create and what I’m able to create feels vast at the moment. It’s enough to make me feel like something is terribly wrong, like I’ve made a huge mistake, like I want to scramble back to the Apple store and return it. After all, when things feel hard, sometimes it’s a clue that something is wrong and that I need to change course.
But, sometimes, when things feel hard, it just means that something is…hard. And new things are hard. For everyone. So, I’m not going to return this iPad. I’m going to keep practicing.
Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean something’s wrong