I Was Professionally Trained to Wait for Permission

Years ago, I read this piece of advice from acclaimed blogger Mark Manson: if you want to become a writer, write 100 pieces. And I remember feeling this immediate wave of relief because my brain instantly translated it into something familiar.

Oh.

Perfect.

A QUEST.

A measurable goal. A finite challenge with a clean ending somewhere out there in the distance. I could practically SEE the progress bar in my head already. Piece #17. Piece #42. Piece #68.

I literally made a Notion document tracking every article I had written over the years. I counted them one by one like I was collecting stars in Mario Kart. Give me a rubric, a ladder, a checklist, a gold star system? Incredible. I’ll optimize the hell out of it.

And the funny part is, I was simultaneously self-aware and dead serious. I remember even calling mentors and proudly explaining, “Well, they say you should write 100 pieces, and technically I’ve already done that.”

Which is objectively hilarious because somewhere deep down, I genuinely believed there was a possibility that if I completed enough creative side quests, I would eventually arrive at the final boss battle where someone officially declared:

Congratulations!!!!

You are now a Writer™.

I am, unfortunately, a professionally trained hoop jumper.

The other day, I literally looked at my husband and said, “Why can’t you just come up with a really good startup idea already so we can be SET?!?!”

And then I stopped mid-sentence and internally face-palmed because OH MY GOSH. That’s the EXACT thing I’m talking about. As if meaningful work arrives fully formed. As if the people I admire most just strategically “came up with” their life’s work one afternoon, like solving a logic puzzle.

I think what’s been uncomfortable for me lately is realizing how much of my brain still expects life to behave like school. You study the rules. You collect enough credentials. You pass enough checkpoints.

Then, eventually, someone tells you:

YES! Correct. You may proceed!!

But the people I admire most don’t really seem to move that way.

I remember having a coffee chat once with a recruiter who told me about a candidate she met early in her career. At the time, the candidate barely had experience for the kinds of creative roles she wanted. And instead of waiting around for someone to hand her an opportunity, she basically went:

Okay… I’ll go make one then.

So she pulled together a small team. Made a film herself. Learned by doing it. And when she came back later, she suddenly had experience. Not because someone granted it to her. Because she created the conditions to gain it.

And honestly, I think that’s why I keep thinking about people like Bertie Gregory.

I’ve been watching a ton of National Geographic lately, and his footage genuinely makes me feel INSANE in the best way. Bees. Sharks. Leopard seals. Whales. Elephants. Everything feels cinematic, and massive, and almost mythic, like the kind of work that surely must require some elite hidden pathway into filmmaking.

But then you hear him talk about how he got started, and the answer is weirdly unglamorous. People ask him all the time, “How do you become a National Geographic explorer?” expecting some incredible secret, and his answer is basically:

start filming animals.

That’s it.

I remember hearing that and thinking, WAIT. Technically, if I wanted to, ... hear me out ... I could go outside right now and make a dramatic documentary about the squirrel in front of my apartment. I could narrate it like it’s a life-or-death survival story. Tiny paws. Limited resources. Winter approaching. Honestly, it would probably do numbers on TikTok. 

AND WAIT, what if I film 100 squirrels? HA. Take that, Manson.

But that’s kind of the point. So ... we don't need to wait for someone to hire us you, nor buy the perfect camera, nor move to Antarctica immediately.

Just start paying attention to the thing you love enough to keep filming it.

And honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize that half the footage people like Gregory can even CAPTURE today only exists because, decades earlier, Jacques Cousteau became obsessed enough to go underwater and figure things out for himself.

He literally invented scuba diving and underwater filmmaking. Which means an entire generation of explorers after him inherited tools that only existed because someone curious enough kept tinkering, long before there was a guaranteed outcome.

Cousteau once said: 

“We must go and see for ourselves.”

And I can’t stop thinking about how fundamentally different that feels from the way I learned to move through the world. He wasn't saying, “We must guarantee success before beginning.”

All you need is curiosity, genuine fascination, and the desire to keep returning to something because you can’t NOT return to it.

Even Jack Conte, before Patreon, was just… making things constantly. Weird music videos. Songs. Experiments. Internet art projects. Not because there was some guaranteed billion-dollar outcome waiting at the end, but because he genuinely loved creating and wanted people to FEEL something through the work. And eventually, through years of doing that, he ran into a real problem creators were experiencing and built something around it.

But the curiosity came first. The obsession came first. The work came first. And honestly, I think that’s why this whole thing feels so emotionally confusing sometimes.

Because intellectually, I understand the advice. Of COURSE the answer is to keep creating. Of COURSE the answer is to stand in front of the stove and start before you feel fully ready. Mark Bittman talks about this in How to Cook Everything … that people overcomplicate cooking when really you learn by actually standing there and making the thing.

A friend recently told me about how differently her parents cook. Her mom apparently pulls every cookbook off the shelf and flips through recipes one by one:

“Nope, missing butter.”

“Nope, missing mushrooms.”

“Almost… but we don’t have apples.”

And eventually she concludes there’s nothing she can make. Meanwhile, her dad just walks into the kitchen and starts. He substitutes things. Improvises. Tastes as he goes. Figures it out mid-process. And somehow he’s apparently an incredible cook.

So yes, standing in front of the stove is one thing, but as Bittman says, the best chefs are flexible. Because I think, for a long time, I approached creativity like her mom approached cooking. Like, there was some correct formula out there that I needed to follow perfectly before I was allowed to begin.

But the people I admire most seem much more comfortable standing in front of the stove without having every ingredient first.

They start anyway, adjust anyway, and learn by being part of the process rather than studying it from a distance. 

They were chasing CURIOSITY. FASCINATION. ALIVENESS. The feeling of wanting to go and see for themselves. And maybe the real shift is learning how to keep moving without needing every step to come with proof attached to it.

Which, for a professionally trained hoop jumper, is honestly TERRIFYING.

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to William Deresiewicz for helping me discover that I am, in fact, a professionally trained hoop jumper.