The Room I Rented Before I Was Ready

I signed the lease on a space I cannot fully justify.

That’s the first thing you should know. There’s no business case, no five-year plan with the numbers worked out. Just a room — empty, mine, and more than I should be spending — and me standing in the middle of it at thirty-two, finally saying out loud the thing I’ve said quietly my whole life. I’m an artist.

I come from people who had it too. The eye. The hands. The ideas that show up at 2 a.m. and won’t let you sleep. But nobody in my family ever called themselves an artist. They had the talent and they put it away and chose what was safe, because safe pays on time and art makes you wait. For years I thought that was just being responsible. Now I think it was fear — the kind that’s easy to mistake for being practical.

And I did the same thing. I climbed the ladder. I chased the title. I measured my worth in what I could put on paper and point to. Art was never going to count toward that. It doesn’t produce on schedule. It asks for years of your time before it gives anything back, and I came from people who never felt entitled to spend their time that way.

So here’s what I know now, the way you only know things later, in hindsight: most of us aren’t waiting because we lack the talent. We’re waiting because no one ever told us our wanting was enough.

For most of my life I made things and showed no one. I told myself the vision wasn’t clear yet, that it wasn’t ready, that it wasn’t good enough — and “not yet” quietly became ten years. But here’s the truth underneath the truth: as long as I never really tried, I got to keep the maybe. Maybe I could’ve been a real artist. As long as the work stayed hidden, no one could hand down a verdict, and I never had to find out.

The studio takes the maybe away. That’s what makes it terrifying. Not the rent. The verdict.

I want to be seen, and I’ve spent my whole life making sure I wasn’t. I come from people who chose safe, and I became one of them without even noticing. I rented this room to become someone and I’m still not sure that someone is any good.

But here’s the part I keep coming back to. I’m the first one in my line to choose the other thing. Not because the odds improved. Not because someone finally looked at me and said now, now you’re ready. Because I decided, on my own, with no evidence, that wanting it was reason enough.

And that’s exactly why it scares me. There’s no one ahead of me who did this. I have no proof that it’s allowed. I’m giving myself a permission no one ever gave me.

If you’ve read this far, I think you have a room too. Something you keep putting off. A talent you’ve learned to keep quiet about, so no one asks why you never use it. I’m not here to tell you to quit your job or chase your dream. I still have mine. I’m still scared. I’m figuring it out in real time, like everyone else.

I’m only telling you what I wish someone had told me before I let “not yet” eat a decade: you don’t need proof that it’s allowed. There was never going to be proof. The permission was always yours to give.

I don’t know if the work is good enough. I still don’t. The walls of that studio are bare, the vision is still a little cloudy, and some mornings I’m certain I’ve made an expensive mistake.

But I stopped waiting to be ready. Some days that doesn’t feel like nearly enough. And some days it feels like the only honest thing I’ve ever done.

Here is a first look at the space — excited to figure out the artist I will be — follow along for the journey. :)