This is my newsletter #21: Nidhi Shah
“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”
-Sylvia Plath
Dear Reader,
I want to talk to you today about the art of learning a new skill. Everyone keeps saying that learning should never stop, that as long as you are curious you are meant to grow. But we often forget that curiosity has an evil friend - doubt. And doubt is enemies with mostly everyone.
For the past 3 months I've been trying to learn three different skills: cycling, German, and illustrating. I got into it for the beauty of it. But I am soon understanding that it's easier to recognise beauty than to create it. I keep envying people who cycle more miles than me, native speakers who are fluent in German, and the lovely list of illustrators that I follow who have mastered the art. I find my ability questionable, my skills unpolished, and my art just plain bad.
A couple of those things changed when I stumbled upon this note by Ira Glass on the struggle of creativity:
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that. And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.
I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes a while. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that."
On The Internet:
WeTransfer asked 35,000 people from every country on how a global pandemic affected their creative ideas. And it’s not that bad! Visualized by Gabrielle Merite, Ideas Report 2020 is as hopeful as it is endearing.
All your sorrows have been wasted on you if you have not yet learned how to be wretched. Read this extraordinary letter from Seneca to his mother on Grief and the Key to Resilience in the Face of Loss.
Author Roxane Gay writes on how unnecessary purchases help her regain control in an uncertain climate. Pandemic Dread Has Me Instagram-Shopping Nonstop is a wishlist of all our moods.
The correct answer to the question “How are you?” is Not too bad. Why? Because it’s all-purpose. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the conditions, Not too bad will get you through. Here’s An Ode To Small Talk.
Here are some of The Letters That Outgoing Presidents Wrote to Their Successors. Each one reminds us what a peaceful—and gracious—transfer of power looks like.
To Look At And Binge:
H.G. Wells, whose official biographer anointed him “the writer-laureate of the cyclists” and who is credited with proclaiming, “When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.” Check these photos of famous authors and their bicycles. It’s a treat!
Last weekend I binged this gripping book adaptation called The Undoing. It portrays the life for a successful therapist in New York and how it begins to unravel after an unexpected murder. Once you are done binging, have a look at this analysis Who Gets to Be a Sympathetic Character in The Undoing?
I make ads for a living. And these two Christmas ads have all of my heart! Watch them here - Give a Little Love and Gucci Gift 2020.
An inside look exploring the unique challenges faced by the men and women who carry out a daily televised ritual, The Morning Show touches upon one of the most life changing and controversial movements in recent past: #MeToo. Oh and the cast is to die for!
Talking about TV Shows, I fancy myself a gripping drama with seemingly rich narrative, here are some of my favourite over the years - Years And Years, How To Get Away With Murder, 11.22.63, Little Fires Everywhere, The West Wing, Giri/Haji.
On My Shelf:
Known And Strange Things by Teju Cole - a collection of 40+ essays divided into Reading Things, Seeing Things, and Being There. From crippling impostor syndrome to capturing the world from a lens; I say it with no exaggeration, some parts of the book were life changing.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling - A stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts, Factfulness states 10 reasons we are wrong about the world and why things are better than you think.
Feel Free by Zadie Smith - From reasoning why we love libraries to the worse of Facebook kingdom, this book is a collection of Zadie’s essays from over years of publications. If you pick this one up, please make it to one of the last essays called The Bathroom.
Coventry by Rachel Cusk - A collection of essays where Cusk tries to make sense of the modern world from a multitude of perspectives and literary criticism. There’s a certain sense of belonging which will make you hold onto this book!
Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso - Looking back on a diary that the author has kept for the last 25 years, she revisits and reexamines life for a new set of eyes. Manguso expresses the desire and the need to write a diary - how it might help her pause the moment.
Some Parting Poetry:
a boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
- Naomi Shihab Nye, The Rider
I don’t do goodbyes well so I am gonna leave you with a project I’ve worked on this pandemic with all my heart and soul. A collective effort of 55+ artists, we made a deck of playing cards to support those whose lives are adversely affected by COVID19. For every deck you buy, you feed 10 meals. Have a look at the initiative here: www.cardsforacause.in. It would mean the world to me if you’d show your support and kindness!
If you would ever wanna talk, come say hi! in my inbox at @nidhlet! I curate more of my thoughts and poetry at @theartletpoetry. Thank you, Rohini, for having me here and for all the magic you create at The Alipore Post!