If you have nothing new to bring to the table, why even show up?

This is the one thought that has been circling around my head for the past year. It has stopped me from trying to get any passion project done, finish any poem, song or essay without feeling like it is awful and lacking substance. 

I don’t know when I decided I had to be amazing at everything, instead of just doing it for my own enjoyment. As people, we often put too much value in the former. 

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Now it all feels like a game of who can do it best, especially as a student – who can get accepted into a better university, earn the best grades or get offered the ideal internship.

More than not these days, I am defeated when I rest my guitar back on its stand and rip out the pages of something I had been working on. 

I mark off compliments as fake niceties, especially when I’m told them by those who are forced to love me, like my mom.

But comparison is never a friend. I should look up to other’s talents and use them as guides and inspirations instead of another thing to compete against. 

As somebody who is often involved in creative spaces like writing and music, it is hard to feel like I have anything new to add to a conversation that has been going on forever. 

I read other writers’ essays, I see musicians who have been playing for less time than me, and that familiar, awful feeling of jealousy comes to sit in my stomach.

I can attribute some of this thinking to the internet, and being constantly exposed to people who will always seem like they are better at everything I do. 

When I had this realization, I could not stop seeing how my own insecurities were limiting me from sharing anything I made.

The difference in the stories lies in individuality. 

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It is about what you personally decide to do with these baseline ideas that make you stand out – how you decide to tell the story with your own twists and personality from your unique perspective. 

More than 100 million love songs and poems exist in the world, yet that does not stop us from finding our own words to tell someone they have a piece of our heart. 

Just because it has been said before, does not mean it has been said your way. 

If you are putting time and care into something, it is worth showing off, whether that be to someone close or posted anonymously on the internet. 

I know I am not the best writer, photographer, drummer, singer or anything else I spend time doing. But what is the point of living if we aren’t enjoying ourselves and sharing passions with each other? 

Stir up some guts, leap into creating and sharing something without fear and see how far it gets you. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you don’t have to be the greatest ever seen, just get something down and put it out there.