I’m sitting at my kitchen table right now, staring at a ceramic bowl that is, for lack of a better word, hideous. It’s lumpy. The glaze is a muddy shade of green that was supposed to be “forest mist” but looks more like “forgotten spinach.” One side is significantly thicker than the other, giving it a persistent, drunken lean. By any objective standard of craftsmanship, it is a failure. But as I run my thumb over a particularly jagged ridge on the rim, I realized something that felt strangely like a breakthrough: I had a wonderful time making this terrible thing.
We live in a world that is obsessed with the finished product. We’re taught from a pretty young age that if you’re going to spend time on something, you should be getting “better” at it. We track our steps, we optimize our sleep, and we certainly don’t start a hobby unless we have some vague intention of mastering it—or at the very least, getting good enough to post a picture of it on social media without feeling embarrassed. But lately, I’ve been thinking about what we lose when we stop being amateurs. When we stop allowing ourselves to be messy, unskilled, and genuinely bad at things just for the sake of doing them.
The Pressure to Be an Expert
It’s a subtle weight, isn’t it? That feeling that your time needs to be “accounted for.” I’ve felt it for years. If I’m reading, it should be a book that “broadens my horizons.” If I’m exercising, I should be hitting a new personal best. Somewhere along the line, the concept of a “hobby” got tangled up with the concept of “self-improvement,” and eventually, “monetization.” We’ve turned our downtime into a second job. We call it “the side hustle” or “personal branding,” but really, it’s just a way to make sure we never actually relax.
I remember talking to a friend who started knitting a few months ago. She was stressed because her rows weren’t even. She was watching hours of tutorials, frustrated that she couldn’t make a sweater that looked like it came from a high-end boutique. I asked her why she started, and she said, “I wanted something to do with my hands while I watched TV.” But the goal had shifted. The goal wasn’t “doing something with her hands” anymore; the goal was “becoming a proficient knitter.” Those are two very different things. One is a process; the other is a performance.
When we approach every new activity with the mindset of an expert-in-waiting, we kill the curiosity that made us want to try it in the first place. We skip the middle part—the part where you’re just a person in a room trying to figure out how a string becomes a knot or how paint moves across paper. We’re so afraid of looking foolish that we only do things we already know we’re good at. And that, I think, makes for a very small, very boring life.
The Sourdough Incident and the Myth of Perfection
I wasn’t immune to this, of course. A couple of years ago, I decided I was going to be “the bread guy.” I bought the flour, the digital scale, the proofing baskets. I spent weeks nurturing a starter that I named (naturally) and treated like a fragile pet. I read the forums. I learned about hydration percentages and crumb structures. I was miserable.
Every time a loaf came out flat or the crust was too tough, I felt like I had failed a test. I wasn’t enjoying the smell of the yeast or the tactile joy of kneading dough; I was chasing a specific aesthetic. I wanted that perfect, Instagram-worthy cross-section. I wanted the validation of being “good” at it. Eventually, the starter died because I was too stressed to feed it, and I didn’t touch flour for six months. It took me that long to realize that I didn’t actually want to be a master baker. I just wanted to play with dough.
There is a specific kind of freedom that comes when you give yourself permission to be a perpetual beginner. When you decide, ahead of time, that the outcome doesn’t matter. It’s like a pressure valve releasing. You can breathe again. You can laugh at the lumpy bowl. You can enjoy the process of learning something new without the crushing weight of expectation.
The Beautiful Science of a Messy Brain
I try not to get too bogged down in the technicalities of things, but I’ve read enough to know that our brains actually love it when we’re bad at stuff. When you’re learning a new skill, your brain is firing in ways it doesn’t when you’re doing something you’ve mastered. Those moments of “wait, how does this work?” are actually the sound of new neural pathways being carved out. It’s a workout for your mind that has nothing to do with the quality of the result.
When we’re “experts,” we’re often on autopilot. We know the shortcuts. We know what to expect. But when you’re an amateur, you’re forced to be present. You have to pay attention to the way the wood grain feels under the sandpaper or the way the light changes the color of the grass you’re trying to paint. It forces a level of mindfulness that is incredibly rare in our fast-paced, digital lives. It’s a way to slow down the clock.
Think about the last time you were truly absorbed in something. Not because you were winning or because you were getting paid, but because you were just… in it. That flow state doesn’t require excellence. In fact, for many of us, excellence is the enemy of flow because it brings along its friend, Perfectionism, who is a notorious buzzkill.
Reclaiming the Word ‘Amateur’
The word “amateur” comes from the Latin word amator, which means “lover.” Specifically, a lover of an activity. It doesn’t mean someone who isn’t good enough to be a professional; it means someone who does something purely for the love of it. Somewhere along the way, we turned it into a slur. We use it to describe something that is low-quality or “second-rate.” But I think it’s one of the most beautiful titles a person can hold.
Being an amateur means your motivations are pure. You aren’t doing it for the “reach” or the “engagement” or the paycheck. You’re doing it because it makes you feel alive. It makes you feel human.
- It builds resilience: When you’re okay with being bad at something, you become less afraid of failure in other areas of your life.
- It encourages play: Play is something we tend to leave behind in childhood, but it’s essential for creative thinking and emotional health.
- It humbles you: There’s nothing like a failed DIY project to remind you that you don’t know everything, and that’s okay.
- It connects you to others: Some of my favorite memories are of “failing” at something with friends—trying to cook a complex meal together and ending up ordering pizza while laughing at the mess.
How to Start Being Bad at Things
So, how do we actually do this? How do we break the habit of needing to be “good”? It’s harder than it sounds because we’ve been conditioned for so long to seek results. I’ve found that it helps to set boundaries for yourself. I have a few “rules” for my hobbies now that have helped me keep them from becoming sources of stress.
First, I don’t buy the “best” equipment right away. There’s a temptation to think that if we buy the professional-grade brushes or the expensive camera, we’ll magically be better. But all that does is increase the pressure to perform. I started painting with a cheap set of watercolours from a grocery store. The paper warped and the colors were a bit thin, but it didn’t matter, because I didn’t feel like I was “wasting” expensive supplies on my bad art.
Second, I don’t show anyone my “works in progress” unless I really want to. The moment you show someone else, you start viewing the work through their eyes. You start wondering what they’ll think of it. Keep your hobbies private for a while. Let them be just for you. There is a sacredness in having a part of your life that isn’t for public consumption.
Third, lean into the “mistakes.” If you’re gardening and you accidentally pull up a flower instead of a weed, look at it. Notice the root structure. If you’re playing an instrument and you hit a wrong note, do it again on purpose. See what it sounds like. Treat your hobby like a laboratory, not a factory.
The Trap of Intentional Living
I know, I know. Even the way I’m talking about this sounds a bit like I’m trying to “optimize” being an amateur. It’s a hard habit to break. We want to find the “point” of everything. We want to know that our time is being spent well. But maybe “well-spent time” isn’t time that produces a result. Maybe it’s just time where we felt connected to the world and our own curiosity.
I see so many people—myself included—trying to live “intentionally.” We want mental clarity, we want finding balance, we want personal growth. But sometimes, the best way to grow is to stop trying to grow and just… be. To sit with the lumpy clay and the messy paint and the out-of-tune guitar strings and recognize that this, right here, is the stuff of life. It’s not the highlight reel; it’s the behind-the-scenes footage that never makes the cut, but is actually where all the fun happened.
There is a quiet, radical joy in doing something you’re bad at. It’s a way of saying to the world, “I don’t have to be productive to be worthy.” It’s a way of reclaiming your time from the vultures of efficiency. It’s a reminder that you are a human being, not a machine designed to output high-quality content 24/7.
A Different Kind of Fullness
It’s getting dark now, and the light in my kitchen is catching that ugly green bowl in a way that makes it look almost—well, not beautiful, but honest. It’s an honest representation of a Thursday afternoon where I didn’t check my phone for two hours. It represents a time when I wasn’t a “writer” or a “worker” or a “consumer.” I was just a person with some mud and an idea.
I think we should all go out and find something to be bad at this week. Something that has no chance of becoming a career. Something that won’t make you any money and won’t make your resume look better. Maybe it’s birdwatching, but you can’t tell a sparrow from a finch. Maybe it’s yoga, but you can’t touch your toes. Maybe it’s just singing at the top of your lungs in the car, even though you’re consistently flat.
Don’t worry about the learning curve. Don’t worry about the “creative process.” Just do the thing. Feel the frustration, feel the confusion, and then feel the immense, ridiculous relief of not caring. We have plenty of areas in our lives where we have to be “good.” Our hobbies shouldn’t be one of them. Let them be the one place where you are allowed to be wonderfully, spectacularly, lumpy-clay-bowl-makingly bad.
After all, the point of a sunset isn’t to photograph it perfectly; it’s just to see it. The point of a life isn’t to perform it; it’s to live it. Even the messy, lumpy parts. Especially those parts.