I went out with my family at almost midnight because we wanted to try a restaurant that had just opened. The restaurant wasn’t even open yet, so I had time to wait. After reading every banner around the road and getting bored, I pulled out my e-reader and started reading.
As usual, I didn’t start from the beginning. I closed my eyes, scrolled randomly, and stopped somewhere. The page was about being an amateur.
Damn.
I laughed.
Because it felt like the book had chosen me.
The very first page I randomly opened was about The Art of Being an Amateur, and it immediately made me smile because it felt painfully true.
I had forgotten how much being an amateur used to be a part of my identity.
Somehow, I had become someone who believed she needed to be brave, confident, prepared, experienced, and capable of producing perfect results before she was allowed to begin anything.
And because I was never perfect enough, never prepared enough, and never experienced enough, I kept waiting for the perfect time.
Which, of course, never came.
Because the perfect time does not come when you are waiting for permission to take your first step.
In June, I started doing exposure exercises. I forced myself to contact people, apply for new opportunities, try unfamiliar things, learn something new, and even read books I would normally never pick up. But my brain still saw many of these things as threats.
I still wanted to avoid mistakes. I was still afraid of people’s opinions and their gaze, even though, honestly, I never truly knew what they were thinking. And I missed the version of myself who had the audacity to keep going. The girl who could crash into everything in front of her with a smile and a complete lack of preparation. The girl who appreciated the experience more than the result.
I don’t know exactly when my grown-up self started preferring results over experiences. But somewhere along the way, failure stopped being a part of the journey. It became the end of the world.
I still remember joining a history competition. I said hi to everyone. I complimented people on things I liked. I asked people to take pictures together. I asked for their social media accounts because I wanted to stay in touch. When I found out I had won second place, I was busy reaching out to people, telling them, “See you again at the next competition,” sharing information, and promising to meet again. I even walked up to my competition crush and asked for a picture together. I tried very hard not to melt because of his smile.
I simply had audacity. I smiled widely, pulled out my charm, and made friends. I didn’t care if I looked silly. I didn’t care that the whole room screamed when I took a picture with my crush because I had already told everyone that I liked him. They were cheering for me, and my little version loved attention and acting that was a take-me-out session. I didn’t care about people’s opinions, the possible impact, or the possible consequences.
I was simply being myself.
A girl who was fearless. Or perhaps, more accurately, a girl who wasn’t measuring herself every five seconds.
Looking back, I don’t think little me was necessarily braver. She simply didn’t spend every second evaluating herself. She wasn’t asking:
“Am I embarrassing myself?”
“Do I sound smart?”
“What if they don’t like me?”
She was too busy living to watch herself living. She was busy taking opportunities because, in her mind, there was no tomorrow. There was only today. And if she didn’t do it today, maybe it would never happen.
Somewhere between then and now, I became the audience of my own life. I started watching myself instead of living. I remember sitting in a waiting room, pretending to revise my notes. Truthfully, I wasn’t reading anymore. I was trying to disappear. People beside me smiled politely. I smiled back for half a second before looking down again. Somewhere along the way, I had learned that everyone in the room was my competition.
Years ago, I would have asked where they came from. I would have wished them luck. I would have remembered their names. I didn’t notice how much fear had changed me until I compared those two versions of myself. And then there was the interview. Around thirty seconds after I sat down, I felt something change. Their body language felt cold. The atmosphere felt different. It no longer felt like a professional assessment to me. It felt like I had already been rejected. Maybe that was exactly what happened. Maybe it wasn’t. ut that was how it felt. And that feeling stayed with me.
I asked myself why hundreds of times. What did I do wrong? What could I have said differently? What was wrong with me? I replayed that moment over and over again. Hundreds of times. Instead of focusing on the fact that I had passed 21 phases across seven months, I focused on the one moment when I didn’t make it to the end.
After enough rejection, your brain quietly rewrites the rules. Trying no longer feels exciting.
It feels expensive.
It feels like it takes too much time.
It feels like I will die somewhere along the way before I ever get to the other side.
You stop asking,
“What if this works?”
and start asking,
“Can I survive another disappointment?”
And what do you mean?
Me?
Yes.
I got stuck there.
For the past two years, I hated myself for not being able to land a job when I knew I was capable. When I knew I could do it. That hurt me the most. The rejection didn’t just make me disappointed.
It slowly made me feel small.
It crushed my hope.
It made me insecure.
It made me want to scream so loudly, yet somehow nothing came out.
Talking to people became difficult because I started assuming they would judge me. That they would see me as pathetic. My pride grew higher and higher because I was trying to protect myself. I didn’t want to try because maybe it would become another failure.
Maybe I wasn’t ready.
Maybe it wasn’t for me.
Maybe I should wait.
Maybe I should prepare more.
Maybe I should become better first.
Maybe it was perfectionism.
Maybe it was a trauma response.
Maybe it was both.
Then, one day, I became so helpless that I cried until my entire body was shaking. My face was trembling. My head was dizzy. And somewhere in the middle of that exhaustion, a question appeared:
Am I really going to be a failure forever?
I realized I had become the fox again. Not because the grapes were actually sour. But because believing they were unreachable hurt less than risking another climb.
No.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t.
After that cry, I woke up, sat down, and decided:
Tomorrow, I would start again. But how?
By exploring.
By exposing myself to the things I was afraid of.
By trying.
By becoming an amateur again.
Because maybe my papers and my GPA could prove that I was smart. Maybe my experiences could prove that I was capable. But that wasn’t enough anymore.
I needed to put down my guard. I wasn’t wasting time.
I was learning.
I was exploring.
I was finding my way.
In this book, How to be Okay When Nothing Is Okay by Jenny Lawson, there is a word from Latin: amare, meaning to do something for the pure love of it.
The book describes an amateur as someone who carries a raw, unpolished enthusiasm that remains somewhat immune to the heavy weight of professional burnout. And I was reminded that if I see a task as a quest, something fun, something I want to do simply because my soul demands it, I might finally free myself enough to make massive, glorious mistakes.
Those mistakes are not separate from the creative process. They are part of it. Being an amateur means keeping enough passion to continue trying, even when you fail at something you love over and over again. Not going to lie, doing something for fun will not prevent me from making mistakes.
It will not stop me from getting stuck.
It will not magically make me less clueless.
But at least my point of view becomes more focused on the experience.
On trying new things.
On learning.
On moving.
This resilience and agility — the ability to stay, enjoy the process, take a break, and walk again — is what will eventually help me build confidence, momentum, and my own unique vision from my original experiences.
As someone who always thinks she knows what she wants, this is torture.
The uncertainty.
The not knowing.
The possibility that I might be wrong.
But again, I am an amateur.
There is no way to know without trying, and there is no way to keep going without sometimes getting lost.
I wonder when exactly I traded curiosity for certainty.
Am I really going to feel calm and poised once I reach the next thing?
Or do I simply keep imagining that another possibility will be better than whatever I have today?
I wonder if staying stuck feels safer because I secretly believe I am already good enough and therefore shouldn’t have to struggle anymore.
I wonder if postponing things to delay failure is really better than trying and possibly failing.
Because if I try, maybe I fail. Maybe I succeed. But at least I learn something.
This experience taught me to keep going.
To take it easier.
To see things as a game.
Maybe it is game over.
Maybe it is the next level.
Either way, I am learning.
