Unmixed & Unmastered – Liliana letter #2
Random thought from my notes: Bring out something special in someone and give it back to them as a gift. The best gift you can give someone is themself
Happy Sunday y’all!
Sometimes it feels like the world is passing you by––lately it feels like I’m running on a giant circus ball but I’m going faster than the ball, so I’m about to faceplant into the ground. Here is an AI generated image to illustrate:
Just a few weeks ago I decided that I was going to stop going to events for a while so I could focus on mastery of my craft. But then I realized, and texted my mom, that “While mastering a craft is cool, it might not necessarily benefit anyone, so I’m trying to allocate my time in ways that benefit other people the most rather than trying to achieve mastery for the sake of it.” Deep, right?
Mastery is a spectrum, not a destination, which means it’s an unattainable goal. If you wait to share your work until you feel like you’re a master, you may never get there. Especially because it’s not a real place, it’s more like a feeling backed by evidence.
It’s all relative––if you’re teaching English to three-year-olds, you’ll feel like a master. But if you try to teach English to literary scholars, suddenly that feeling of mastery is gone.
Mastering a skill can benefit others, but it doesn’t always. Just something to be realistic about. Like I could choose to master sarcasm, but that’s not going to bring about world peace.
It’s worth considering––why do you want to achieve mastery in whatever you’re pursuing? Is it to serve others, or is it to look cool?
You can release yourself from the pressure to show up as a master. Better to show up as yourself right now than to show up as a “master” 10 years/10,000 hours late.
Maybe mastery is something that happens as a result of doing something out of love so much that you master it, and maybe it’s not something to aim for. Maybe focusing on doing the best you can is an irresistible lure for the fickle beast of “mastery.” OK someone take my keyboard away right now.
Last thing––I wanted to start a newsletter for the better part of a year and I kept putting it off because I was scared, so I’m glad to be here! Thank you for being here!
Love and kindness,
Liliana
P.S. Question of the week: Putting aside what you need for a moment, what are you needed for?
P.P.S Here is my first newsletter from last week in case you didn’t get it because it went to spam! If it did go to spam, I blame the government and Big Email
NEWSLETTER #1 (LAST WEEK)
Hihi,
Welcome to this newsletter – thank you for being here – I am wishing a lovely Sunday to my lovely people!
The best thing you can do in this life is accept these two contradictory ideas at once:
- You are the most important thing in the universe
- So is everyone else
It is very dangerous to believe that you are the most important thing in the universe. It’ll mess your life up, and it’s annoying to the people around you.
It’s also very dangerous to believe that you’re unimportant. It’ll probably mess your life up even worse than the first belief, and it’s annoying to the people around you. Just being honest.
Only when held together are these ideas extremely powerful, and not annoying to anyone around you.
I believe in acting with great humility, but only if that humility is built on a foundation of knowing your inherent worth. You are a reflection of God; that makes you important.
The same thing that makes you important makes everyone important. This might be a disturbing analogy but it’s like we’re in a funhouse with a bunch of different mirrors, all reflecting different images of God. In this analogy, some of the mirrors may be dirty or extra warped, but it’s still God.
Speaking as me, Liliana, going through life as important and unimportant helps me immensely. It helps me take risks, connect with people, make art, and make peace with myself.
In college, when I started solo traveling, I realized that everyone I met had something very special to offer, and I took great joy in bringing out special things in people. Only after doing that for a while did I realize that I also had special gifts to offer because I’m no different from anyone.
That’s why I believe self-love can come from with-out rather than from within. People often say “How can you love someone else if you don’t love yourself,” but I say, “How can you love yourself if you don’t love anyone else?”
My favorite spiritual teacher, Nero Knowledge, likes to say that we’re all like the ocean in different bottles. We’re all the same, just in different packaging. I think that’s why it works so well to make art that you truly love, because if you want something to exist then the collective consciousness wants it to exist too.
Look, art is just making stuff that no one asked you to make. I struggled for a while with what art is, and that’s the definition I came up with. So to make art that resonates with people, you have to make things people didn’t know they wanted. You have to be in tune with them. Don’t worry, you don’t have to mind-read, since we’re all the same you can look inward.
The more honest and in-tune you are with yourself, the better you’ll get at making the things that no one asked for and yet they wanted.
Ok that’s all for now. If you feel like it, let me know what you think of this newsletter, I’ve never written a newsletter before and idk if any of this qualifies as news
Pottery update: I don’t want to give too much away but here is a work in progress shot of a special collection
Also, if you know a great videographer in the Atlanta area and want to put them on for a cool project, please let me know!
Song of the week: GROWING PAINS by Yeat
Question of the week: Do you spend more time feeling important or unimportant?
Signing off wishing you the absolute best this week,
❤️
Liliana