Audacity

the fluid nature of identity, labels, action versus feeling

A label is not a credential. It is a declaration—and declarations require audacity, not expertise.

What we call ourselves shapes what we believe is available to us. Labels can be comforting, yet equally they confine us, trap us. They can give permission, and they can take it away.

Alan Watts wrote extensively about the fluid nature of identity—the idea that we are under no obligation to be the same person we were five minutes ago.

Are you creative? Are you a writer? A photographer? When will you be the thing you dream of being? When you finish the course? When someone pays you?

Not when you feel ready—because that feeling, I promise you, is not coming before the work. It comes during it. Often long after you’ve already begun.

William James wrote in Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899)¹ ,

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”

A century later Julia Cameron arrived at the same place from a completely different direction. Her entire framework in The Artist’s Way is built on action—morning pages, artist dates, showing up before you feel ready. She uses affirmations too, I’ll admit—but as part of a system of action. Cameron understood that a mirror and a mantra without action is just theatre.

Identity doesn’t precede action. Action precedes identity. You don’t become a writer and then write. You write until you are one.

When I started calling myself a photographer I made space on a shelf for my gear—that is an action. I sought out community. I started asking for help from people willing to teach me. I showed up to things. None of that happened because I got better first—it happened because the label created permission. Permission to take it seriously. Permission to take up space. Permission to be bad at it, even publicly, for as long as it took.

I am a writer because I write. Thinking about writing does not make me a writer—and aspiring to write certainly doesn’t. “Aspiring” is a waiting room. One foot in, one foot out, waiting for a permission slip that no one is going to hand you. The label doesn’t require an audience. You can write privately. You can take the photowalk without posting it. The action is the point, not the announcement.

Artists have sketchbooks full of bad drawings. Photographers don’t show most of their work. Potters fail at the wheel, regularly. The label doesn’t mean you’ve arrived. It means you’ve decided to keep showing up.

I am a writer. I am far from perfect, I struggle, I make mistakes, I feel all over the place. But I write.

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Week 1 Prompt

What’s the label you’ve been withholding from yourself?

You don’t have to announce it. You don’t have to post it or publish it or tell anyone at all, but feel free to reply to me or comment below.

You can write it down somewhere—a journal, a note on your phone, the back of an envelope. Say it to yourself in whatever form feels possible.

Notice what shifts when you do.

Next week we talk about what comes after you say it.

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Affirmations (The Artist’s Way, Week 1)

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Personal Work

Back alley rule of thirds.

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Thought provoking recommendation

• Living in an age of technology in a culture obsessed with rational control

• How someone can easily be obstructed by their own cautiousness

• The problem of human ecology and how one should best relate to their environment

• Considering what our idea of heaven is and what desires we truly want

• The western model of the universe (intellectual, architectural, mechanical)

• Reductive thinking: seeing the world through a net and making everything into a comprehensible, geometrical unit

• The fundamental difference between a mechanism and an organism

• How understanding the world through only conscious attention can lead to seeing everything as parts rather than the whole picture

• Combining the academic, analytical mind with the organic, ‘gooey’ mind

1. Talks to teachers on psychology : and to students on some of life’s ideals by James, William, 1842-1910 :

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Hey, you made it to the end. I have a secret for you.

This four-week series came from many hours of thinking and learning about “self-commitment.” It started brewing in the background as I wrote emails for members of an online yoga school I work for, and I needed more time to process it in relation to creativity.

So, two weeks will include me dusting off my yoga-teacher brain and pulling together a little audio for you. I am nervous. I am excited. And I hope you like it.

This has all been part of a larger umbrella question: “Where do I see my writing on Substack for the next 100 posts?” And I realized I wanted to play a little more. Not just with writing, but with format.

Thank you, as always, for tagging along as I learn with you.