There is a framing that I want to cultivate more in myself, to embrace more. Being a failing amateur is something to strive for. I am writing this to remind myself.
We usually associate the word “amateur” with someone who has no expertise the thing they are doing. In the original sense though, the word amateur has a different connotation. It comes from the latin “amator”, signifying “one who loves”. Being an amateur is about doing the thing because you love the thing, not because you are getting paid for it. Being an amateur does not tell you anything about skill level - you can be someone doing your craft without getting a cent for it, but be at a professional skill level. More than that, I think it can arguably be even better to not get paid for something you love - you can optimize for mastering the skill itself, instead of having to optimize for other things that are related to making money out of it. Then again, being paid for something often comes with other resources and amounts of time, that you would otherwise be unable to spend on the craft. It all comes down to the individual thing you are doing and the situation you are in. As with everything, it depends.
Similarly, often times people see failing with a similar negative connotation. As something bad, that you want to avoid. I think this is misguided and unhelpful. Failing is actually a key part to getting better at something. You fail, you reflect on what went wrong, you improve. If you never fail, you are not acting at the limit of your skill level. You are doing too little, not risking enough. In a perfect world, we would look at our failures without judgement and learn from them. Maybe we would even celebrate failures, looking forward to the opportunity to learn that they give. With the right people I can already see this play out and the energy in these situations is something different, allows for a lot of unrestricted curiosity and explroation.
This mindset is what I want to cultivate in myself and hopefully by example also in the people around me. As an addition to that, I want to make a deliberate decision to fail publicly more. There is a kind of ingrained anxiety in me of “this is not good enough, better not show it to anyone” that keeps me from producing, that keeps me from sharing with the world. By making it a goal to fail publicly as much as possible, I am keeping my ego in check (which thinks itself so important that it wants to make sure that no one has any opportunity to attack it, which it does by avoiding failures). I think I am already succeeding by putting out these low quality essays here. Maybe by iterating hundreds of times my writing will get better, up to the point where my efforposts can match a throwaway comment from Scott Alexander (i wish).
I don’t want to make this my identity, as I generally try to keep my identity small, but it seems worth keeping this framing in mind as a direction to orient myself toward and as a heuristic on how to meet failing amateurs, especially if I am the failing amateur.