The Curse of Simultaneous Superiority and Inferiority

Why Taking Small Steps is Braver Than Big Leaps

The Buyers Holding the Embarrassing Painting I Made That I Secretly Loved

This past weekend, I broke a family curse—the curse of a self-imposed separateness from the rest of the world due to feeling both better and worse than everyone else. What earth-shattering thing did I do to break the curse? I—gulp—participated. In a local arts fair.

Let me explain: When I was growing up, my mother painted, drew, sculpted and studied art and design in all its forms. She also knitted museum-quality, one-of-a-kind sweaters. Any time anyone would suggest she show her beautiful work—maybe in a local gallery, at Glen Echo Park or at a crafts fair—she would list all the reasons why she wouldn’t, and couldn’t. “That’s for old sherrings,” she would say. Translation: That’s for old biddies. Tacky women who had no fashion sense. The art was low quality, she said.

The other side of my mother’s refusal to participate was: “I cahn’t do that.” “But why?” “I just cahn’t.” Later, I jokingly referred to her as “the Little Engine Who Cahn’t.” “I wanted to be a fashion designer,” she would say, sighing, “but we were too poor.” So she gave up on her dream, and never quite found a profession that fit. She had a simultaneous sense of superiority and inferiority.

My parents didn’t believe in joining things: they wouldn’t even join the town pool. And somehow, that attitude seeped into me, running its rivulets through my life.

Even though I’ve been writing since I was in high school and I’ve published a book, I still feel loathe to call myself a “writer.” And though I’ve been painting on my iPad and making other kinds of art for the past ten years, I still feel like a fraud if I call myself an “artist.” I tell people I never went to art school, but I don’t mention that I’ve taken tons of classes over the years, and I’ve learned a few techniques. In my mind, I’m a perpetual beginner. That’s the inferiority.

I reinforce this insecurity like I’ve always done: by going BIG, then using the rejections to say to myself, See I told you so? I’m a hack and a fraud.

I ignore the conventional advice to start small: take baby steps. Join a local group. Not me! Oh no. The local group had a storefront in town, and I mostly didn’t like the art. These weren’t my people, I concluded. They liked primary colors. I liked pastels. As if all the artists were the same. That’s the superiority.

So what did I do instead of take the next logical step? I sent my work to nationally known artist’s magazines and competitions instead.

I’ve always done things backwards and now I realize why—it’s safe. You would think it’s the bravest thing to send your short stories to the New Yorker and enter your art into the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever prize competition. But it’s safe. Rejection is safe. Okay, I’m done now, I tell myself. I can stay in my hidey hole and no one will criticize me.

I’ll never forget my friend’s mom, who I admired for her beauty plus intellect and wit. Like me, she was the daughter of an alcoholic, so I’m guessing we had some of the same issues with self esteem. She once confided that she wanted to be a poet, so she sent her poems to the New Yorker. When they rejected the poems, she decided she wasn’t meant to be a poet, and stopped writing poetry altogether. She sipped her wine and sighed, looking off into the distance. I get it.

The local art fair was completely low stakes—no payment was required, and it was more like a big hangout session on a sunny day than anything else. And yet, sitting behind my little plastic table with my art displayed in front of me I felt like a little kid saying, “Mommy mommy do you like my art? Do you like it? Do you like it?” Desperate for outside validation to tell me if it was okay to make another piece of art.

But we all know how that ends. A teacher says a house shouldn’t be pink, and the next time you try to draw a house, you’re stuck. You don’t want to draw a red house, but grudgingly you do, because you don’t want to teacher to say anything negative.

I recently made a painting that I loved I posted it on instagram and then felt pangs of regret. It felt too pink, too pretty, too much like a little kid’s art. Why can’t I make sophisticated adult art, like geometric shapes in restrained colors? Or intellectual art that has a big grad-school-worthy message?

On the other hand, it gave me so much pleasure to paint that painting, and when I hung it on my wall, it made my heart sing. And then I decided on a whim to bring it to the art fair. See if it made anyone else’s heart sing. A young girl, maybe nine years old, gravitated right to it. She asked her mom if they could buy the painting. Her mom seemed to like it, too. I beamed when they asked the price. I was on top of the world! Then they FaceTimed the father in front of my booth, and I heard him say: “That’s not really my thing.” Ooof. My face fell and my heart sank. People think my art is stupid, I thought. As proof, I marshaled up all the people who had passed by my booth with a dismissive glance or a polite smile.

Jesus, the roller coaster of other people’s opinions! It’s like living with a constant judges’ panel in your head.

Then the mom made up her own mind to override the father. “It’s not FOR the men,” I whispered to my friend.

“My daughter’s an artist, too,” the woman said. “That’s amazing!” I said. “Is this pop art?” The girl asked. “Yes! It sort of is!” I cried out. She gets me. This little kid gets me. “And let me tell you something,” I whispered. “It sort of was modeled on Taylor Swift.” Her eyebrows went up and she smiled big. “Really?” She bounced on her toes.

That, my friends, was worth the whole day of sitting. Who cared about the acquaintances who stood at my booth asking how my son was doing while not even glancing at my art? Participation in this fair brought me this experience with this girl—a joyful exchange of creativity! I would never have had that if I had stayed home.

Saying yes to things has a way of pinballing. The next day, I marshaled up all the courage I had to go meet the members of an artist’s collective, who wanted to see my art before deciding if I could rent a studio and join the collective. Spreading my art out on the floor for a few of the members to judge felt like walking in front of the football fraternity where the beefy guys sat on a stone wall and called out numbers to girls, passing by. 8! 10! 2! Ugh. Could I hack it?

No one said, “Wow! This art is amazing. You’re a genius!” But what they did say was: “Welcome to our collective.”

So readers, not only did I join something, but I am taking the daring leap of renting an artist’s studio. Going wayyyyyy out of my comfort zone to realize the stuff I’ve only dreamed is for OTHER people. People who went to art school and won big prizes.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Never has this quote from the Tao been so true. For years, I was trying to start at the top of the staircase, only to topple down.

Or this quote, attributed to William H. Murray, an educator, lawyer and politician: “The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves, too.” Or this one: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

And then I came across Memoir teacher, publisher, writer and podcaster Brooke Warner’s Substack, which spoke directly to my heart. She talked about a man named David Whyte, and something he called “the arrogance of belonging,” which he defined as “a bold willingness to show up as yourself…instead of waiting for external validation or permission.” Yes! That’s what I need!

“We have to be careful not to cultivate alienation and isolation over belonging,” Warner writes. “There is an inactive teenager that lives inside all of us…wait(ing) to be invited instead of claiming their belonging…Don’t wait to be asked; just step forward and in.”

And so I take my first baby steps through the wardrobe into this Narnia-feeling new world of joining and belonging…I’ll let you know how it goes.