Professionally Trained Hoop Jumper

People often assume there’s some hidden doorway into the life they want. Some secret credential. Some perfectly timed opportunity. Some moment where an authority figure taps you on the shoulder and says, “Okay, now you’re officially allowed to begin.”

And I think about this because lately I’ve been watching a lotta National Geographic, especially the work of Bertie Gregory, who is one of the most incredible (*chefs kiss*) wildlife filmmakers I’ve EVER seen. His footage is un-BEE-lievable. The kind that makes you wonder how a human being even got close enough to film it. We're talkin' bees, polar bears, sharks, whales, cheetahs. Creatures in impossible places. Everything feels cinematic and massive and almost mythic.

But then you hear him talk about how he got started, and the answer is strangely unglamorous. People ask him all the time, “How do you become a National Geographic explorer?” as if there must be some elite pipeline into that world. And his answer is basically: start filming animals.

Yeah, that’s it.

Not “wait until someone hires you.” Not “buy the perfect camera.” Not “move to the Arctic immediately.” Just start paying attention to the thing you love enough to keep filming 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. But that’s kind of the point.

We imagine these careers as giant polished identities when, most of the time, they actually begin as people obsessing over something in embarrassingly small ways before anyone takes them seriously.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this pattern shows up everywhere. I’ve always loved the writing style of Mark Manson. I know he’s not everybody’s favorite writer, but I love how direct and unpretentious his work feels. Years ago, I remember how he explained how people constantly asked, “How do you become a writer?” or “How do you become a blogger?” And his advice was simple: write 100 pieces.

When I first heard that, I treated it like a quest. Perfect. One hundred pieces. I’ll make a checklist. I’ll track my progress. Piece #17. Piece #42. Like somehow the hundredth article would unlock a magical cutscene where I suddenly transformed into “a real writer.”

Which, honestly, is an extremely Excellent Sheep way to approach creativity. I am, unfortunately, a professionally trained hoop jumper. Give me a rubric, a ladder, a checklist, a gold star system? Incredible. I’ll optimize the hell out of it. Years of school trained me to believe that if I just hit enough milestones in the correct order, eventually someone would hand me an identity at the end.

So of course I approached writing the same way. Not as a practice, but as an achievement structure. As if the goal was to complete writing instead of becoming someone who writes. But of course, that wasn’t the lesson.

The lesson was that by the time you’ve written 100 pieces, you’ve stopped romanticizing writing and started actually doing it. 

You’ve developed taste. Rhythm. Instinct. You’ve learned what connects and what falls flat. You’ve probably written 40 terrible things, 20 decent things, 10 things that surprised you, and maybe one thing that made somebody feel seen.

The point was never the number. The point was repetition.

It reminds me of this line from the cookbook How to Cook Everything. Mark Bittman basically argues that people overcomplicate cooking when really the only way to learn is to stand in front of the stove and start.

Not when you have every ingredient.

Not when you own the expensive cookware.

Not when your kitchen looks like a Pinterest board.

Just start cooking.

And honestly, I think that advice applies to almost everything worth doing. Because most people spend an enormous amount of energy trying to avoid being bad at something before they’ve even begun. We want proof we’ll succeed before we’re willing to look inexperienced. We want certainty before movement. We want evidence that our effort will eventually become identity.

But the people I admire most usually didn’t start that way. So many meaningful things begin much smaller than we expect.

A person filming animals in their backyard.

A writer publishing awkward early essays online.

Someone learning to cook with whatever’s already in the fridge.

Not because they know it will work. Not because the world validated it yet. But because they genuinely like doing it. And honestly, I think that’s why their work becomes good in the first place. Because there’s a huge difference between pursuing something only for the outcome and pursuing something because you can’t help returning to it over and over again. I don’t know... I think I needed that reminder.

Maybe the biggest thing standing between people and the life they want isn’t talent or access or permission. Maybe it’s just the belief that they’re supposed to already look professional before they begin. But most interesting people didn’t start polished. They just stayed in front of the stove long enough to become good.