Have you ever felt like you aren’t good enough at something to spend time or money on it? Maybe you love to dance, but can’t do a graceful pirouette in a room full of skilled dancers. Or maybe you love to paint, but don’t see the point in spending money on supplies if your art isn’t even that good. Whatever the case is, you are keeping yourself from doing the things you love because you don’t feel that you are good enough.
In our society, being average is seen as a negative thing. In order to be as successful as possible, people are starting to learn and perfect skills earlier and earlier. When I was in grade school, all of the girls on my school volleyball team also did club volleyball. As someone who was only on the team to have fun, it was very frustrating when everyone else was so much more skilled and competitive than I was. I was average at best at volleyball and that was made out to be a bad thing, but I still had fun doing it. Just because you aren’t the best at something does not mean that it isn’t worth doing. Something does not have to be profitable to be worth doing. Anything that you love is worth doing just because it brings you joy.
Dabbling,working at anything in an irregular or superficial manner, is something all of us at one point do. Many people have downloaded Duolingo in the hopes of learning a new language only to find themselves abandoning the app a few weeks later. The internet is filled with articles saying that you can only benefit from something if you really dive deep into it. Dabbling is seen to be a waste of time. However, you shouldn’t have to profit off of something in order to justify spending time on it. For example, you might love to write poetry, but you only have a little bit of time to commit to it and don’t feel that it is super original. That should not stop you from creating! Fulfillment and joy can come from many different things, so let yourself dabble and let yourself be average. As long as you are happy, it doesn’t matter what other people think.