Maryn is trying to get magic
On creative confidence and trusting yourself
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“Secrets make everyone alone. Secrets lead to panic. When you keep it a secret, you get hysterical. You get to thinking you’re the only one there is who’s like you, but that’s not so. When you’re alone keeping secrets, you get fear. When you tell, you get magic. You find out you’re not alone. And so does everyone else. That’s how everything gets better. You share your secret, and you change the world.”
This quote is from the novel This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. The other day, I was flipping through my journal (mostly used for getting myself out of my head) when I saw I had written it in an entry from September 2022.
Next to the quote, I wrote:
I’ve been hiding for a while. Not trusting people. Not sharing. And that has taken a toll.
When you tell, you get magic. Because I’m magic! My story is magic! Not hiding is magic. Sharing with others is magic.
I want to do that again.
I had been feeling that way for a long time.
I first made my Substack account a couple of years ago, and even brainstormed some names for a potential newsletter, but didn’t get any further than that.
A lot has happened since then! Namely, an existential crisis which for some reason I decided the solution was grad school.
I’ll admit, my grad school did a good job selling the program to me as a potential applicant back in 2020. They said the program would “change your mind” — like how you THINK! — and help you grow in creative confidence.
I thought to myself, Yes! I need these things. I feel like I have so much inside me, so much I want to create and share, but no confidence to do anything about it.
Welp, the rest is history.
I probably didn’t need to go to grad school to find the creative confidence I was hoping for, but it certainly taught me some things about myself, such as I’m incredibly good at overthinking, getting stuck, starting over, gaining traction, overthinking, getting stuck, starting over… and so on.
It also taught me that sometimes, when I allow myself to follow what feels good and make for the sake of making, it feels pretty magical. And it usually turns out much better than when I overthink everything into oblivion. It’s cathartic, actually.
When I graduated and it became clear that the job market was crappy and I would need to stay in my longtime job for the foreseeable future, my intuition started nudging me in the newsletter direction yet again. I needed to make for the sake of making.
This time, I was still scared, but I also knew it wouldn’t hurt to at least try and see what happened.
In the beginning, posting caused me serious anxiety (now just semi-heightened anxiety)! Every post has felt like its own mountain to climb. Nine weeks later, I’m somehow still here, and for this overthinker, that’s huge.
I’ve been reading Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being off and on for the past several months. It is full of wisdom for living a creative life, like this nugget that hit me today:
“One of the greatest rewards of making art is our ability to share it. Even if there is no audience to receive it, we build the muscle of making something and putting it out in the world. Finishing our work is a good habit to develop. It boots confidence. Despite our insecurities, the more times we can bring ourselves to release our work, the less weight insecurity has.”
A few years ago, I was really struggling (hi, depression) and was genuinely worried that I wasn’t capable of doing anything of meaning or value. I had the hardest time doing basic tasks, let alone any sizeable projects! I started believing I was incompetent and that I couldn’t trust myself.
Grad school was a stepping stone in learning to trust myself again. But doing this newsletter — purely for me — has been something else. The fact that I’m continuing to show up and post each week and put myself out there? I couldn’t have comprehended it a few years ago. I’m sharing myself again. It’s what my intuition has been guiding me toward for years. And it does feel like getting magic.
A few weeks ago, I got a surprise in my inbox: Substack telling me that my newsletter crossed 100 subscribers! Over 100 of you care enough about what I have to say to voluntarily subscribe and read my thoughts?! Thank you for being here.
A genuine surprise of sharing my unfiltered brain has been finding and connecting with like-minded folks. Like, extremely like-minded folks. It’s almost spooky. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling lonely and like I may never find people who understand me. But you’ve found me here. And I’m so grateful to have found you too.
What’s something you’ve wanted to do for a long time, maybe even years, that you’re working up the courage to try?
I’ll share another one. I really want to try making comics. Not Sunday newspaper-type comics, but comics like the ones from a few of my favorite Substackers:
, , . They make me feel all the things.How about you?
Until next time,
Maryn (is here)
I've said it before and I'll say it again - jumping into grad school was such an incredibly brave and amazing thing you did and I will always admire it so much!! I don't know if I'd ever have the courage to do something like that, though I do sometimes daydream about going back to school to really learn illustration! WHY didn't I do that the first time around? .....because I was too scared to try something that I didn't think I was inherently *the best* at and instead went with a degree in an art that felt "easier" to the abilities I already had. Eek.
Yes to magic!! Finding it, experiencing it comes from from all the elements you've described. The more I share openly, the more magic has appeared in my life - over and over and over again. Am I the only one now dying to know more of your secrets??