I'm not even sure where I read the words "stop outsourcing truth and stability" but they've been following me around the house ever since, stepping on the backs of my shoes, and tripping me up.
What is the cringe, actually? It's recognizing the exact moment I give my power away.
When I put creative work into the world — publish it, show it, sing it out loud — I'm doing something a little scary: claiming that the thing came through me, and I’m standing behind it saying this is real and it matters. But then I do the truly terrifying thing: I arrive at an honest number at which to price my work and immediately feel the urge to shave it down before anyone objects. It’s like haggling with someone who isn't even there. I am preemptively losing a negotiation with an imaginary critic.
Why do I do this?
Arriving at an honest number takes into consideration the obvious visible costs: materials, studio overhead, tools, insurance, an updated website. It takes into consideration the invisible costs, too: the research, the trials and errors, me trying to do math, and the spectacular fails currently living in my scrap bin.
But there's a third less obvious cost. And that's the specific, unique way the artist sees the world and translates it into objects, or songs, or poetry. The attention to beauty and meaning that inform every single creative decision.
How does one factor that into the value? Is that just the price of being creative?
(Asking for a friend.)
The unique way you see the world gets treated as the least legitimate part of the overall cost. Which is backwards, because, to me, it's the most important part.
If you're an artist, isn't that the deepest and most damaging form of outsourcing? Not just handing your creative worth to a phantom audience, but preemptively agreeing with the most reductive possible version of its own value. Anyone could make this. It's just a painting, a necklace, a poem — fill in the blank. I got lucky with my style. We do this to ourselves before the critics even show up. We beat them to it.
Your unique way of seeing the world — your creative genius — gets treated as a quirky luxury. When it is, in fact, the whole product.
Here's where someone usually clears their throat and asks: But is art even a necessity?
Okay. Let's go there.
Sure, nobody needs a handcrafted labradorite necklace to survive. Nobody needs a poem. Nobody needs an oil painting of glinting sunlight on water. But here's what all three are actually saying: I witnessed this truth, this beauty, and I could not keep it to myself.
That's not decoration, nor is it privileged luxury. That's one human being grabbing another by the sleeve and saying — Look. Just look at this. Aren't we lucky to be here?
(Tell me that's not necessary. Go ahead. I'll wait.)
And by here I don't mean lucky to be talented, or lucky to have a studio, or lucky to have found our livelihood. I mean lucky to be awake in a generous, mysterious universe that keeps offering up labradorite, sunlight, water, and inspiration in an infinite color palette.
And maybe that's what keeps stepping on the backs of my shoes. Every creative person who has ever undercharged, over-explained, or handed their power to a phantom critic before anyone even entered the room knows this feeling.
But here's the thing: the cringe is a compass, not a verdict. It's not telling you that the value of your work is wrong. It's showing you exactly where you've been giving the work away. Every time the discomfort shows up, that's the compass needle swinging toward the place where you're about to stop trusting yourself.
And that's useful information.
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