Confessing my amateur habits to a room full of serious artists taught me an uncomfortable lesson about ego, aging, and the quiet danger of always feeling capable.
Curator’s Note: In a room filled with accomplished artists, the author confronts the discomfort of revealing their amateur status by simply admitting, “I like to doodle.” This confession not only defies their fear of judgment but also highlights the hidden dangers of competence—essentially, the stagnation that accompanies it. The desire to appear skilled often suppresses genuine curiosity and the joy of being a beginner. As many adults retreat to what they know, they lose the electric thrill of exploration. The author urges embracing new, unrefined pursuits, emphasizing that true growth and vitality lie outside of mastered activities, in the messy, unpolished experiences of learning. This story was written by Gary L. Fretwell and submitted to Digitalmehmet Content Ecosystem as a free resource.
Being a beginner again can bring back the joy of creating.
There is a particular kind of quiet panic that strikes when you are asked to introduce yourself in a room where everyone else seems to carry heavy credentials. Your throat tightens, your thoughts race through a mental resume, and you instinctively search for words that will sound polished, formidable, and entirely worthy of the space.
Recently, I found myself standing in a room full of exhibited artists. These were practitioners who understood light, form, negative space, and tonal value in their very bones. They spoke comfortably about gallery openings, curated collections, color theory, and the exhausting rigor of studio practice. As the introductions moved around the circle, people cited degrees, juried exhibitions, and decades dedicated to mastering oil, clay, and watercolor.
When the gaze of the room finally turned to me, the inevitable question landed on the floor: what kind of work do you do?
My defenses dropped, the impulse to manufacture a sophisticated artistic identity vanished, and a blurt of unvarnished truth slipped out before I could stop it:
“I like to doodle.”
An internal cringe echoed through my mind immediately. To describe what I do as doodling in front of accomplished painters felt like admitting I play with scented markers at an international summit of sculptors. I braced for condescending smiles, awkward silence, or polite nods meant to cushion an amateur who had wandered into the wrong room.
Yet the room did not collapse, and no one laughed me out into the hallway. Instead, the confession opened up an unexpected space of quiet recognition. In speaking the word aloud, I stumbled straight into a reality many of us spend decades dodging: we are desperately addicted to the comfort of competence.
As we move through our careers, raise families, and step into the middle or later chapters of our lives, we spend an enormous amount of energy building fortresses of capability. We become the people with the answers. We know our industries inside and out. We know how to solve problems on the fly, navigate organizational labyrinths, manage finances, run households, and command respect.
That competence is hard-won, and it offers genuine rewards. It gives us security, status, and a reliable shield against humiliation. When you know what you are doing, you rarely look foolish. Your ego stays intact. You navigate your days on smooth, well-paved tracks where your skill protects you from surprise and vulnerability.
The hidden cost of competence, however, is stagnation.
Once we grow accustomed to feeling capable, the prospect of being a beginner becomes terrifying. We dread the clumsy, fumbling sensation of unfamiliar tools. We avoid taking up a musical instrument because our hands feel stiff and uncoordinated. We decline to speak a new language because our pronunciation sounds childish. We shy away from drawing or painting because the finished image bears zero resemblance to the vision in our imagination.
Without consciously realizing it, we develop a rigid rule for adulthood: an activity is only worth pursuing if we can execute it with polish, authority, or commercial value. If we cannot do it well, we convince ourselves that we have no business doing it at all.
When we surrender to that mindset, we lock the door on genuine curiosity. Children understand this instinctively. When five-year-olds sit down with crayons and paper, they are not strategizing their future portfolios or calculating return on investment. They do not freeze in fear over whether their tree looks technically proportioned. They are entirely immersed in the tactile, uncalculated joy of the process itself. They draw because the act of making a mark is inherently exhilarating.
Somewhere along the road to maturity, we traded the joy of process for the safety of performance. We became spectators in any arena where we could not guarantee an impressive performance. We chose the safe harbor of what we already knew how to do over the open water of discovery.
Admitting to that circle of artists that I doodle was an accidental act of liberation. It released me from the exhausting performance of competence. It allowed me to claim a creative impulse purely for the pleasure of moving ink across paper, without needing to justify the result to an audience, a marketplace, or my own critical mind.
Competence gives you safety, but being a willing beginner gives you your life back.
Growth, renewal, and vitality do not reside in the things you have already mastered. They hide in the messy, unpolished margins where you have no authority and no reputation to protect.
If you find yourself clinging tightly to the things you do best, challenge yourself to step into an arena where you are utterly unqualified. Pick up a pen and draw crooked, strange shapes in the margins of a notebook. Try an unfamiliar craft. Ask the basic question you fear might sound silly. The goal is never to become a virtuoso overnight; the goal is to remember the electric thrill of being alive in the middle of something new.
Read the original reflection here:https://medium.com/illumination-retirement-aging-legacy/the-comfort-of-competence-0be6ea8179cd?sk=a47c98c0cf29553d51807cfd122d5d32
About the Author:
Gary L. Fretwell spent 43 years in higher education consulting, working with nearly a thousand institutions before retiring to Prescott, Arizona. He is a #1 international best-selling author blending neuroscience with Stoic philosophy to help people build a life of lasting significance. He’s the author of eight books on intentional living and retirement, including the #1 bestsellerThe Magic of a MomentandIntentional Retirement.
On Medium, Gary founded and editsIllumination: Retirement, Aging & Legacy.
📖 garyfretwell.com · 📬 The Wise Effort on Substack · ✍️ Follow on Medium
Leave a Reply