This took me a very long time to learn: you don’t have to be immediately good at something if you enjoy doing it. I’m terrible at painting minis, but I have fun doing it. I was awful at BBQing when I started out, but I enjoyed experimenting with rubs and iterating on the best way to get the coals going. Sure we had a couple gnarly racks of ribs in the early days, but now my daughter demands them on the regular. I was a terrible coder at ten years old, but I kept at it because I loved being able to make the computer do things and I’m tolerably good at it now.

I can’t remember which Contrapoints video I got this from, but amateur derives from amatorem (lover in Latin.) The amateur pursues something for the love of it, not because they’re good at it or want to make money. Society wants us to grind, use all of our time for maximum profit, and only do things we’re already amazing at. Fuck that. Do something you’d love to do, even if you somehow remain fully mediocre at it. It’s good for you.