I’m founding a new business venture. And, it’s not so much like I’m groping in the dark. It’s more like I’m trying to think while my neighbour’s smoke detector is going off. The noise can be so hard to ignore, it can be paralysing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect can’t be all bad. The less you know about something, the more confident you are about it. It’s a perverse gift of our wonky brains. And yet, there is a subtle benefit there for people starting out in challenging areas with long roads of growth. When I started learning guitar in the 90s, I really only had to be as good as the little cluster of people who came to the little circuit of open stages in my town. It was a wonderful way to get comfortable being on stage, try out songwriting (I could write some catchy hooks, but my lyrics were cringy and forced), and maybe learn a few things. Between us and the bands filling venues and on steady rotation on MuchMusic was a vast gulf strange enough to be both uncrossable and bridged by the impossible logic of why not me?
I had no idea what was really in there. I could bang out 3-4 chord songs. I could be part of suburban garage bands that play two shows, practice twice and then combust. I could learn a little about recording. It was all fumbling, emboldening, and frustrating. If you didn’t bump into someone to show you the way, you had to make it up as you went along. No tutorials. No algorithm. No foolproof system. No 5 things you need to know. Just trial, error and luck.
Now, if you go online, it feels like no one is doing anything but trying to sell you the way, the tools, the platform to do the things you want to do. The Internet has become the middleman to our aspirations, and AI makes this exponentially worse. If you don’t know what to do or how to do something, there’s someone or something that will be ready to tell you, ad infinitum. Sometimes, it’s helpful and other times you have to dig through so much middling stuff to find a vein worth mining. It’s important to recognise that the cognitive drain is real. The idea that you could find that one little piece that makes customers crawl to you, begging to give you money. Or, that way to play a chord that makes you famous. Or, whatever it is you want.
That’s the noise I’m dealing with. We all know how distracting it is.
And anyway, the best advice on how to do the work is to do the work. The only one who can practice your guitar playing is you. I regret to inform you, and you may have guessed, that I didn’t make it as a punky folk singer in the early Oughts. But, I am trying to reclaim some of that energy, that willingness to be loud, to be seen, to be heard. I am trying to cultivate that stubborn readiness to trade hard work and a little risk for a small chance, rather than hoping someone will wander by and tap my shoulder and make me famous.