Everything I Make Embarrasses Me Eventually

I had a minor crisis about this website last week.

Not a real crisis. A very specific kind of internet-person crisis where I started looking through old photos and old posts and suddenly wanted to crawl under a blanket and pretend none of it had ever happened.

The old photos looked dated. Some of the things I wrote made me cringe. There were outfits I would not wear now, pictures I would not take now, and approximately one million choices I would make differently if I were doing them today.

And then, because apparently my brain likes to be thorough, I started feeling embarrassed about the new things too.

I've been making these illustrated family pictures for Eight Takes lately, and I love them. They're colorful and funny and a little ridiculous, and they let me tell stories about our family without putting actual photos of my kids all over the internet.

But every once in a while I look at them and think: Oh God. Am I really doing this?

So there I was, embarrassed by things I made fifteen years ago and embarrassed by things I made fifteen minutes ago.

A very efficient system.

But then I realized something that made me feel much better.

I always have.

I like taking pictures. I like writing. I like building websites. I like moving things around and changing colors and trying something and deciding it's terrible and trying something else. I like having an idea that doesn't quite work and figuring out why. I like making something better than it was yesterday.

And if you make things for long enough, you're inevitably going to make some things that aren't very good.

You're also going to outgrow things that once felt exactly right.

That's not a reason to be embarrassed. That's practically the whole point.

The reason I look at an old photograph and immediately see seventeen things I would change is because I've spent all these years learning how to make a better photograph. The reason I can look at something I made last week and already know how I'd improve it is because I'm still learning now.

I don't want to become so afraid of making something embarrassing that I stop making anything at all.

So I'm trying to be a more generous fan of myself.

I can look at something I made years ago and think, Oh, absolutely not, and still have some affection for the woman who made it. She was trying things. She was learning. She was putting something into the world instead of waiting until she knew exactly how to do it.

And I can give the woman making things now the same grace.

Some of these illustrations will probably make me cringe someday. I hope they do, actually. I hope five years from now I look at them and can immediately see how I could have made them better.

Because that will mean I kept going.

I don't have to love everything I make.

I just want to keep loving the part of me that makes things.