making beautiful things

by Diana Molzan

This week I was feeling stressed and scattered over nothing in particular. Or rather, I was fretting about several things: an essay I needed to finish, my Substack posting reschedule, the draft of the book that I’m probably going to rewrite for the fourth time, various relationship dilemmas, etc etc. I felt behind on my own life and sort of like my head was being squeezed by a large claw. And then a couple of days ago I realized that I was being an idiot. Because 1) I just want to make beautiful things. And 2) literally nothing is stopping me from doing that.

Sometimes I forget that, the overarching ethos of it all. That I actually enjoy doing this, the writing and rewriting. That it’s okay so long as I feel good about a single paragraph once in a while.

Last weekend I was talking to J about how it’s such a rare privilege to actually like your work. I mean I think like 2% of people really like what they do. And it’s always so obvious whether someone does or doesn’t.

I really like what I do. I like every part of my life, actually. (Even the parts I complain about all the time.) I’m lucky that I get to choose to spend my time on things I find interesting. I’m lucky that I have enough time to try to do a good job.