Beginners

I love beginnings. I love setting goals for a New Year. I love a fresh start. A blank page. The first chapter. A clean desk. A new haircut. A fresh coat of paint. I love first days.

Generally I don’t make a New Year's Resolution - I make a dozen of them. I make spreadsheets or sticker charts and hold on to them for at least the month. I have a friend who always asks for a word or phrase for the year and prints it on a bracelet.

This year, however, I’ve struggled to set goals. (Any goals, much less a dozen).

Last fall I attended a writing conference and one of the keynote speakers took a moment to address the beginners in the room. It is a category that I put myself in (for writing) on most days. Emily P. Freeman said something I wrote down.

“Everyone likes a beginning, but hardly anyone likes to BE a beginner”

And I felt every word. I want the chance to do and try new things – I just want to do them with the winsome skill of an expert. New beginnings are things we hope for, but being a beginner holds fear and insecurity.

There is a great clip on this by NPR’s Ira Glass that I think about often. (The whole thing is worth listening to …but here is the most important part):

“ Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it is normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I can tell you as someone who spent the last year as a beginner writer that it is 100% true for writing, but I also think it holds for most endeavors. Not just creative ones. I love a fresh start but hate the clunkiness of not knowing the next right thing. I’ve been in my current position for over four years. I was so excited to get the job but was petrified to look like a novice. I spent the first several months worried that I was missing an important meeting, sending emails with terrible typos, giving wrong answers, changing my answer or flopping publicly. And occasionally all of the above. With a few years of exerpiecne behind me, I still occasionally do some of those things. I hate the way it feels, but I don’t get stuck in it because I have years of positive experiences to balance it out. The little things are just as scary. As a beginner I had to learn things like how to unjam the copy machine, when and who to eat lunch with (on days where I get a lunch) and how loud I can play my music in my cubicle before someone complains. A beginner has to figure out the task, but also the environment. The environment is often easiest to navigate but can still keep me from trying a new yoga class or joining a new group at church. The gap between our ambition and our ability is the one that only closes by doing what Ira suggests, a lot of work. It seems there are no shortcuts for experience.

Sometimes, I am a runner. I’m not very fast but I like to go long distances. These days I rarely run more than a mile or two but I used to be able to log 10-12 at a time. And it doesn’t matter, if I was running 8 miles or 2 miles - the first mile was always the hardest. The first mile sucks, even for a marathoner. I used to think this was just some kind of mental inertia….but turns out it is physically true. A cardiologist explained this as something called aerobic shift. Before you start running your body is in a resting (anaerobic) state and oxygen levels are fine for watching Netflix but won’t meet the demands of intense activity. When you start a run and your heart and lungs get going - your body has to ramp up its oxygen levels to meet the higher demand (and move into an aerobic state). Once your body gets there and you are getting the oxygen you need then you should have an easier go of things (and feel slightly less like dying). This often takes 10 minutes or so for that oxygen level to ramp up to meet your activity level. In other words we aren’t imagining it, the first mile IS actually harder. Your heart needs some time to catch up to the new demand. Maybe we also need to give the rest of us some space to catch up to any new ventures. If our heart and lungs need time to adjust - it is only fair to give our emotions and skills that same kind of transition period.

Ira’s advice was pretty much the same as the cardiologist.

And it is no wonder people don’t like being a beginner.

It is hard and uncomfortable. That we can expect the beginning to feel agonizing and that the trick is to fight your way through. It is normal for it to take longer than you think. Beginnings have gaps and shifts that take a while for us to catch up to.

Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery at something. I did the math and that is approximately 5 years of 40 hour work weeks (with a few vacations factored in). I’m getting close to 5 years in my current position and I’m somewhere in between Ira’s beginnings and Malcolm's mastery. I’m no longer a beginner but I hope I never quite realize that.

It is the grit Ira Glass talks about that makes me want to be a beginner forever.

Here me out - I mean this -even after writing how terrible it feels. I don’t actually want to fumble my way through forever, but I do want the commitment of a beginner.

I want the butterflies in my stomach.

I want the posture of someone trying to get better.

The truth is that some experts wear me out, at least the ones that have stopped being willing to listen and learn. Occasionally confidence can turn into complacency.

Beginners are rarely complacent, they are too busy looking up what they don’t know.

A beginner is willing to learn.

A beginner generally cares more about growth than perfect outcomes.

A beginner pays attention.

A beginner is given grace. A good beginner will give grace to themselves.

A beginner listens and asks and is open to feedback.

Even in spaces where I’m no longer a beginner I’m forever working on that gap. I’m bridging the work I want to do with the work I actually produce. If I keep typing, it will get there. Maybe my heart will too.

So here’s to a New year, even if it is still with the old you.

Even if I’m a few weeks late to the party. Maybe you have already slipped on those resolutions. Give yourself the grace of a beginner and begin again.

Or maybe you are like me and haven’t quite sat down to make them yet.

So here is to a new year, new beginnings and being a beginner.

Regardless of what month or day of the year it is.