Why Is It So Hard to See How Far You’ve Come?

How do you acknowledge your success?

I mean truly take it in?

There is no one more damned than those who cannot see how far they have come. And oh, I might be one of them.

Just yesterday, Esha put up a beautiful story on her Instagram about me - about achieving goals, setting milestones, breaking them, and then setting even higher ones. And honestly, it made me realise something uncomfortable: I don’t really see my accomplishments.

I never stopped to think, this is it.

I never considered myself fierce. That’s a word I usually reserve for other women. I never imagined someone would say that about me.

But lately, many people have.

I smile when they do, but I don’t really take it in. Instead, I find myself wondering why they see me that way. Because in my eyes, there is still so much left to do.

I don’t really set goals. I don’t have five-year plans. Truthfully, I don’t even have a plan for this year. All I know is this: I have to try. I have to put effort into creating something that lasts beyond me. That has been my only real goal - to make something that survives beyond my time here.

Yet I have felt like an imposter ever since I began this path.

Ironically, art should probably have been the most natural path for me after school. But I still feel like I don’t belong.

Part of it may be because I didn’t come from the art world. My upbringing was similar to most middle-class families: if you study well, you become something. If you don’t, you just… don’t. That belief system still lives somewhere in my body.

I didn’t formally study art. So a small voice inside me keeps asking: Will I ever be someone they respect?

(Deep breath.)

We’ll have to see.

For that to happen, I’ll have to make something worth respecting. Something worth remembering.

But lately I’ve been stuck in this feeling. And because of that, I broke a promise I made to myself - that I would keep expressing myself.

When I don’t express myself, everything bottles up inside with no outlet. And that makes me miserable. I oversleep. My energy drops. My inner will to do anything slowly disappears.

Then I reminded myself of something - Working out.

For months I didn’t want to do it because I kept getting injured. Then I got help - a coach who didn’t belittle me or my shortcomings. And suddenly, in four months, my body started showing incredible results.

I had been resilient.

So the question now is: how do I bring that same mindset to my work?

Yesterday, while talking to a friend about feeling like I don’t belong and how I haven’t been able to create anything lately because nothing feels good enough, he said something that stayed with me.

He said I need to be fearless about failing.

To make bad work. To make “crap”. To get it all out.

His suggestion was simple:

Take on a challenge. Finish one artwork every week. The medium can be anything. No restrictions.

One week. One artwork.

More is welcome.

I think it’s brilliant.

I’m going to try this for two months and see where it takes me. At the very least, I’ll learn what works for me.

Coming back to acknowledgement - I truly don’t know what I’ve done to deserve the kind of love people show me. But I am very grateful for it ❤️