You ever wonder if Beethoven had days where he thought, Maybe I should just quit this piano thing? Like, maybe halfway through writing the Fifth Symphony, he slammed the lid down and muttered, “Who even cares?” Because honestly, some days feel like that. Some days, you’re out here trying, experimenting, throwing your soul into something, and the response is crickets. Worse than crickets. It’s silence, but you can feel people silently thinking, Oh, honey, maybe you’re not cut out for this.
I’ve been there. Hell, I’m probably still there, limping through what I call “the trench of unmet expectations.” It’s where you start with all the excitement in the world, only to realize that the world doesn’t care. At least not yet. Maybe not ever.
There’s a weird kind of humor in it, though. Like the time I thought I’d cracked the code, created a video I was sure would resonate with people. Vulnerable, raw, everything they say you’re supposed to be. I clicked “publish” with the kind of hope you usually only see in cheesy sports movies. And then? It bombed. Bombed so hard I wanted to send it a condolence card.
You’d think that would crush me, but it didn’t. Not fully. Mostly it just made me laugh at myself because who did I think I was? There’s something liberating about failing so hard it clears the air.
But what’s funny is, that’s the exact moment most people bail. They stop. They say, “Well, I guess I wasn’t meant to do this,” as if the universe sends handwritten invitations to people it thinks are “meant” to succeed. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
Here’s what actually happens: you get out there, you do the thing, and it sucks. Then you try again, and it still sucks, just less. Repeat until you look up one day and realize, Oh, I kind of know what I’m doing now.
Nobody tells you that, though. All you ever hear are the polished origin stories. The ones that go, I saw a gap in the market and just knew I had to fill it. No, you didn’t. You made a mess, you stumbled into something, and then you figured out how to spin it into a TED Talk later.
I get it. The truth isn’t sexy. Nobody wants to hear, “Yeah, I tried twelve things, failed at ten of them, and the other two are just okay, but I’m still figuring it out.” But honestly, I think that’s the kind of story more people need.
Because the truth is, you might never get applause. You might pour everything into a project, and it could flop. You might keep going and get better, only to realize nobody’s paying attention. But here’s the kicker: that doesn’t mean you stop. You keep going because you’re not doing it for the applause. You’re doing it because something inside you insists that you must.
I think about all the dreams people don’t chase because they’re scared of failing, scared of looking foolish, scared of wasting time. But here’s the secret: time’s getting wasted anyway. Might as well waste it on something that lights you up.
For me, the joy is in the doing. The experimenting, the tinkering, the trying and failing and trying again. It’s messy and frustrating and sometimes feels like shouting into the void, but it’s also mine. My work. My failures. My growth.
Maybe nobody will ever applaud. Maybe I’ll never have that moment where everything clicks, and the crowd goes wild. But maybe that’s okay. Because applause fades. Growth sticks. And if you ask me, I’ll take messy, frustrating growth over applause any day.
By the way, I made a video about all this. It bombed. But maybe you’ll watch it and find something in it that resonates. Or maybe not. Either way, it’s there, just waiting.
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