“Let It Be Shit, At First”

I’m 13 years old, waiting for my name to be called at the trampolining competition I spent months training for, until the moves were muscle memory.

 I hear my name sound through the speakers and I make my way onto the cross. Salute the judges. Take a deep breath and begin my routine, steadying my bounces, waiting for the land that I decide is solid enough to take off from.

I fly into the first move with precision, but don’t seem to land with it. It feels wobbly, but at this point, it’s all a bit of a blur of just trying to get from one move to the next.

I continue to move and with every inch closer to the end, relief starts to flood through me. I’ve seen the perfect landings on the cross; it’s felt tight and precise. Just one move to go. And that’s it, I land perfectly on the centre, bend my knees to stop the bounce and salute the judges with relief.

But as I go to step off the trampoline, I see my coach's fallen face greeting me as he comes to place a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it kiddo” he says as I stare at him blankly. Why isn’t he celebrating that killer routine? Sure, I started a little wobbly, but I pulled it back, didn’t I?

I sat and waited in anticipation of my score and that’s when it hit me that I hadn’t pulled it back at all.

0, 0, 0, 0 greeted me when the judges held up their cards. I’d scored zero.

 It turns out that my first move wasn’t just a little wobbly; it was a fault. I had landed on one foot, which had essentially rendered every move after that pointless. It didn’t matter that I had pulled it back, none of those moves could be counted.

 Welcome to my first real lesson that working hard doesn’t always work (one I would go on to experience time and time again throughout my twenties).

In my head, if I trained enough, conditioned enough, ate enough, then it was enough.

But of course, that didn’t account for human error, strict judges and a rulebook that left no room in the margins.

So, like a good overachiever, I spent hours in therapy fixing that (never actually) broken part. The part that was terrified of failing, or doing anything remotely shit. 

And I thought I’d done exactly that. 

Until I find myself on a writing retreat and the words “let it be shit, at first” are printed on our sweatshirt and my instant reaction is  “oh hell no”.

I found myself sitting on that first “shut the fuck up and write” session, staring at the jumper in front of me, teasing me with a trigger so tantalising it begged to fill the blank page.

So that’s what I did with it. I filled pages upon pages of why I rejected the very notion of letting it be shit until I ended up with an article I couldn’t wait to share (the one on my Substack this week).

Because I realised that, despite my deep resistance, and honestly, fear of letting it be shit, there was a part of me that really wanted to explore that notion.

You may remember I wrote about heading on this retreat in honour of “Little Em”, who was the queen of letting it be shit. She didn’t love to create because everything she touched turned to gold. She didn’t even bother polishing the turd. She just let a shit be a shit. I believe that is why she felt so creatively alive, and I too, wanted to feel that way again.

So, as I sat here dancing in circles around letting it be shit, I realised that true creative aliveness can only come from you doing so.

 If everything you create has to turn into brilliance that captures what you do perfectly and sells out your work every single time, then you aren’t residing in creative freedom. You’re trapped in a creative cage.

 I spent the entire retreat starting sentences that trailed off to nowhere.

Writing with words that felt true, and not at all algorithmic, or doom-scroll friendly.

Writing with zero purpose other than to express what felt alive within me in that moment.

Scribbling out what felt untrue the second it found the paper.

Ironically, letting it be shit led to some of my best work.

I stopped trampolining not long after that competition. I fell out of love with it after I realised that the desperate need for it not to be shit sucked the fun out of it. 

 And I don’t want the same to happen to my words…

I spoke about this on my latest Podcast episode.

 https://open.spotify.com/episode/1sUMEzwDHdmxg7BRd7t0sN?si=446b808b8ecc4bc1