Remember way back when you stuck a list of your hero qualities up on your bedroom wall or dog-eared the page so you could look at it when you needed to be reminded of your strength? Well, I hope you’re feeling even stronger now that you’ve reached these final pages.

I also hope that you’re not expecting your adventure to be over. Surely you’ve noticed—or at least noted that I keep saying—that the demons never fully die. That’s not because you keep failing in your battles; it’s just life. Highs and lows and all the mediums in between.

But now you’re better equipped to slog through the hard battles and enjoy the flow during the good times. Now you know you can slog through, that it’s worth it, that there’s satisfaction and happiness on the other side.

REMEMBER THAT UGLY IS MIGHTY

Fear, doubt, perfectionism, procrastination, block, and all the shades of demons between and around them—they’ll be a part of your creative practice forever. Remember what you’ve accomplished on these pages. Remember that those demons aren’t plaguing you because you suck, or because you’re untalented, or because you shouldn’t be trying. Remember that they plague you because you’re human, just like they plague your neighbors, just like they plague the artists and musicians and crafters and makers and performers whose work electrifies and inspires you.

Remember how valuable ugly is. When you get to a point when you feel like a caged animal, remember that making something ugly can be the master key to get you out. It can help you see clear paths where before you only saw dead ends; it can help you see color where before you saw only gray. If nothing else, it’ll keep your hands busy for an hour and hopefully free your mind.

Remember that your struggles mean you’re onto something—even if that something requires an about-face. Trying to pretend those struggles aren’t important won’t get you anywhere but stuck. So look at them, immerse yourself in them, no matter how uncomfortable it feels. Then slay some demons, have a long chat with your ugly voice, and move on to make more stuff.

Finally, remember to relish the great times. Remember to accept and savor compliments, to feel proud of your accomplishments, to delight in the thrill of achievement. Take credit when it’s yours to take, and give it liberally.

The Importance of Duality

One day, tooling around online in a geek fangirl maelstrom of open browser tabs, I discovered that the actor who played Astrid on the sci-fi show Fringe keeps a Tumblr blog. And so I discovered one of my favorite blogs.

Jasika Nicole does everything, it seems. She knits; she sews; she draws; she’s achieved some awesome feats in upholstery. But more than her crafts, I love her approach to making things. She just seems to love it so much, and she rarely qualifies what she’s made. She’s just happy to have made the thing, and that happy is contagious. In a vast sea of stunning DIY-focused blogs with shiny photographs portraying impossible lifestyles, Jasika’s Instagrams of her projects-in-progress provide some sweet relief. Unsurprisingly, she waxed the most philosophical of all the people I interviewed for this book. I was especially moved by her reply when I asked about her ugly voice, and she came right back with the assumption that there’s an equal and opposite voice too.

“For me, duality is necessary. I can’t have a voice in my head telling me that I am awesome all the time without a counter voice telling me that I suck. It’s a part of life—pros and cons to everything, people who like you and people who don’t, people who you like and people you don’t, things that make you happy and things that make you sad. If there is a possibility that who you are is perfect, there also has to exist the possibility that you are imperfect. And maybe both of those things are true. Or maybe neither of them is true. The point is, doubt and worry and self-consciousness are integral parts of how we exist in the world, and I don’t think we have to look at that ‘ugly’ voice as a bad thing—maybe that voice can provide some incentive for us, or force us into a having a different perspective, or just motivate us to prove it wrong. Sometimes the ugly voice can help shine light on what your real anxieties are when it comes to being an artist, so at the most basic level, it’s not the ugly voice that holds you back, it’s your fears that make themselves known by manifesting themselves into the ugly voice.”

I’m going to just leave it at that.