There's Enough Fabulousness to Go Around

(First published 9/7/2020)

Life is full of opportunities to compare ourselves with others and choose to come up short.

It’s funny how readily we take those opportunities. No matter what we’ve accomplished or how good at something we are, sometimes we're compelled to look at someone else who we think is doing it better, faster, or more successfully, and tell ourselves that we don't measure up.

Or, more plainly, we might even say to our poor selves, "I suck."

Sometimes, we have one of those days (or weeks) where it seems that everywhere we look, someone is doing something fabulous and brilliant, and capitalizing on great ideas faster than we can even decide what to eat for lunch. Never has this been more apparent than during the coronavirus lockdowns. 

Our email boxes and newsfeeds have been bombarded with subtle (or not subtle) messages from marketers and merchants telling us that if we aren't accomplishing something big during this time, we will have wasted the time-- we will have failed. 

Social media has been saturated with accounts and pictures of lockdown accomplishments by some, as others just try to survive physically, financially, and emotionally.

At the beginning of the lockdown, even though I don't have any more time than I had before, I joined an art journaling group on Facebook. I just wanted a safe, comfortable space to share my developing ideas and get inspiration. 

Before I could post my first pages of marks and colors, though, the Art Journalers (capital A, capital J) swooped in like huge birds of prey with their posts of fabulous, gallery-quality pages, leaving me feeling like my unfinished pages were a fragile baby chick about to be obliterated by a hawk. At least I learned what an "art journal" is not. 

And then there are those gorgeous pies on Instagram. I’m sure you know the ones I mean. I’m a good baker, even if I do say so myself, but when I first saw those exquisite works of pastry art, first, I thought, “What a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?” Then I beat myself up a little for not having achieved something big with my own pies.

We humans are simply wired to compare ourselves to others. 

A few years ago, I joined an online writing group. During our introductions, we each shared our goals for the next six weeks.

"I want to create and finish four blog posts during this six weeks,” I said. 

Other introductions went like this: “I’m working on the third book in my series, and I’d really like to wrap up the first draft,” or, “I have a publisher for my book, and I need to get X number of chapters done.”

It was tempting to be unfair to myself by diminishing the value of my goal in comparison to some of the others' goals. But the personal blog posts and articles I write feel more like essays to me; they are pieces I want to take some time with. I value them. 

When we compare our creative goals and accomplishments--- those dear-to-our-heart things that make us vulnerable-- -with what others are doing, it can be easy to lose sight of what we're doing, and what we've done.

If we're not careful, we can spin fantastic stories of our failures inside our own heads: “I've failed. I haven’t even written a pandemic poetry anthology, let alone a fiction series." Or, "I’ve been making edible art for decades. What's wrong with me that I don't have my own baking empire by now?"

Sometimes, fortunately, the muses roll their eyes, and then they feel compelled to stage an intervention. 

Recently, when I was in one of these moods (which was also preventing me from being able to write), I decided to look through my old pieces of writing for some inspiration. (I highly recommend saving your unfinished writings in a file, even if, at the moment, you don’t like them, or can’t think of a way forward with them. They may be just the thing to spark or continue a creative idea later.)

I found a piece that I had written a couple of years ago during a writing meditation-- with that writers' group I mentioned earlier, as a matter of fact. (At the time I had written it, I was struggling with making time to work on my personal writing projects. I was also paying attention to far too many stories about people who had supposedly catapulted to mammoth success in no time with their writing.

I had felt paralyzed by the feeling that I needed to get busy, even though I was already busy.)

The writing meditation had involved clearing my head, greeting my higher self, and asking her what she wanted to say to me. The exercise that followed involved writing out the message I had received during the meditation, without judging or trying to overthink it as I wrote it out. Here’s what I wrote back then:

Don’t worry about comparing yourself to others – their talent, their progress, the seemingly rapid time they’ve ascended to impossible success. You have your own journey, and it’s just as valid and admirable as theirs. And you don’t know what their journey has been like. Just keep writing.

Other people have their trajectories, and I have mine.

I'm glad the muses stay in touch with my higher self, because sometimes, I'm bad at staying in touch.

My higher self prompted me to remember something else, too: 

There’s enough fabulousness to go around. 

But the muses weren’t done yet. Not long after that, I received an email from a woman I’d written a bio piece about — an accomplished woman who is a professional musician, a scientist, and an author.

“Loved the bio!” She said. “You have such a knack for capturing who people are! I envy your writing gift.” (Yes, earlier, as I was researching her for the bio, I had been having thoughts like, “Wow, I’ve never been a soloist with the XX Symphony. I haven’t even invented one medical device yet. I suck.”)

“I envy your writing gift,” she had said. 

It was another small reminder that we’re all allowed to have gifts, open them, and enjoy them simultaneously, and none of those gifts will look exactly the same. And even if someone has opened hers fully before we've opened ours, neither one diminishes the other. 

Just because someone has made it to a finish line before you doesn’t mean you won’t get to yours. (Or, as often happens with creative endeavors, your finish line will be different and unexpected, anyway. And it’s likely to keep moving.) 

The word “abundance” is an annoyingly trendy word, but it is still a good word. 

Creativity and creative success are available in abundance, as are other wonderful things like love, kindness, inspiration. No matter how much of it someone else gets or uses, an infinite amount is still available to all of us. It’s not like there’s a pie, where once the pieces have been dealt out, it’s gone. 

Though from time to time, we may be inclined to compare ourselves with others we admire, it doesn’t mean we’re obligated to identify all the ways in which we don’t measure up. (And for those who can honestly say that they never compare themselves to others, or that they always come out superior in a comparison, well, bless their hearts.)

Artist and author Jill Badonsky, a mentor and friend of mine, has a tip for when you feel this way: Instead of saying, “Look at what she’s doing!” Say “Look at what we’re doing!”

Take the time to remember that both of you are rightful members of the creative world, partaking in the limitless creative energy that surrounds you... And you’re both on your own creative trajectory. 

Comparison doesn’t require that one be greater and one be less than. Look at what we’re doing! There’s enough fabulousness to go around.