If you don’t speak, you won’t find your voice.

You have to speak in order to discover your style.
You have to play in order to uncover your melodies.

Get over the thought that you need something to say before you begin. You don’t. What you need is to start doing.

Now—if you’ve read my other writings, you might feel this sounds contradictory. I often argue that great art comes from having something to say. That it’s the inner conviction, the message, that makes work powerful. And that’s true.

But here’s the paradox: you won’t know what you have to say until you’ve stumbled and struggled with saying anything at all. You have to make art before you have something to make art about. You have to play the wrong notes before you know which ones belong. You have to show up unready—naked, uncertain, and afraid—and still try.

That’s the strange beauty of art: it demands we move before we feel prepared.

---

the practice

There is no readiness.
There is no “enoughness.”

There is only showing up. Again and again.
To the page. To the instrument. To the canvas. To the code.

Comparison is irrelevant. There will always be people “better” than you, and always people “worse.” And if not at this thing, then at some other thing. The best electric guitarist in the world is not the best flamenco guitarist. The best essayist is not the best novelist. No one wins every game.

The only thing you can ever be best at is being you.

Even if you could paint cubist works like Picasso, or write plays like Shakespeare, you would only ever be second-best Picasso or second-best Shakespeare. And anyone who tries to imitate you will be second-best to you.

That’s the point of finding your voice: it can’t be replicated.

---

the desert

Life doesn’t ask us to sit still and plan forever.

It asks us to walk into the desert without a map.
It asks us to take the forty-year journey without knowing which way is east.

That’s what it means to practice, to create, to live. You don’t wait until you feel ready. You step forward. You do the work. You play the notes. You speak the words.

And somewhere along the way, you discover your voice.