The Hole In Life & Art ⛳️
[Sent: March 9th, 2022] April is usually an intense month with Spring just around the corner - but April can also be a fake friend where you ask them, “Are you actually going to show up for me this time or are you going to go back to your old ways again by giving me sky dandruff?” It is also the month of my birth and I always think about allowing myself to feel grateful during this time. To say, “Wow, I’m still here.” But the other side of me thinks that it was only yesterday that I was this 7 year-old who lip-synched Shania Twain in her bedroom with a flashlight as a microphone, who then proceeded to one day wake up at 27 in a cubicle. These birth months can feel overwhelming and heavy. This sense of dread where we beat ourselves up for being in a place that doesn't make us feel proud.
I was listening to an audiobook I rented from our local library called ADHD 2.0 by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey, not because I have ADHD (not that I know of), but because my best friend has it and I want to be there for her. Whenever she says, “I feel overwhelmed and I don’t know how to schedule things,” I want to be more helpful than responding repeatedly with, “Just get a calendar.” ANYWAY. At the end of the book, the doctors compared working with ADHD to golf and wrote something along the lines of, “The goal of golf is not to get the ball in the hole.” While Brendon and Wesley were acting natural in their cottage-core habitat, I was having a major epiphany 👁👄👁.
This resonated with me because I always seem to have an end goal with art and an end goal with life itself. For instance, the goal with singing is to hit the note so I can avoid embarrassment. The goal in life is to become something. However, I'm realizing that the goal in life and in art is not to hit an end target but it is the process of whatever we are doing.
So then I Googled:
and landed on an article called Dr. Bob Rotella: Inside the Golfer’s Mind. Please note that I do not know anything about golf and that I don't intend for this newsletter to be self-help vibes. I used the following to ease my imposter syndrome symptoms for Thursday's performance at Grounded Kitchen. Enjoy The Process. Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself. "[Players] They know that if they get too concerned about not being bad, they might not free themselves up enough to be great” (Rotella, 2008). At times, I become disappointed in myself when I believe that I did not do my best after a performance. This usually happens when, in the moment, I listen to the voice in my head that says that I sound bad. The shows that I am happy with are the ones where I immerse my entire body into via swan dive. I do this by explaining the song rather than paying attention to if I am flat; although, important nonetheless. As one of my friends once said, “People aren’t going to be mad at you and say, ‘God, did you hear that one note that she didn’t sing properly in that one part of the song?’” Embrace The Mistakes "If you truly love golf, you must love the fact that no one shoots 50, that golf is an inherently imperfect game” (Rotella, 2008). Instead of internalizing the mistakes and hating myself, I will own up to the mistakes. Singing is imperfect. Music is imperfect. Art is imperfect. Although perfect is attractive, perfect can also be boring.
Believing In One’s Self "Confident golfers think about what they want to happen on the course. Golfers who lack confidence think about things they don’t want to happen” (Rotella, 2008). ‘Nuf said.
Having all of this in mind, we did our best to be present while performing on Thursday. The energy that we brought into it was a template of how we should continue to simply have fun and not ruminate on the end results.
Thank you so much to those who came out and we hope to perform again soon!
Work Cited
Rotella, B. (2008, June 5). Dr. Bob Rotella: Inside the golfer's mind. Golf Digest. Retrieved April 7, 2022, from https://www.golfdigest.com/story/rotella
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