Trust the Process (It's Ugly)

Why Repetition, Frustration, and Trusting the Process Are the Only Things That Actually Matter

Whether I’m learning new music, drawing a cartoon, or making a YouTube video, the process is never pretty. It’s messy, frustrating, and usually looks like failure right up until it doesn’t.

Being unemployed has given me more time to create, which sounds great in theory. In reality, it means I’m drawing little cartoons for my videos, practicing guitar and bass constantly, and spending a lot of time staring at my own work thinking, this is trash. I’ve been playing music for most of my life—over forty years. It’s the one thing I actually know how to be good at. And because of that, I never get discouraged with music. I know exactly what it takes: you play the same damn thing a thousand times. Then you play it a thousand more. You repeat it so much a reasonable person would quit and take up hiking.

The difference is, I’ve seen what’s on the other side of that kind of repetition. I’ve lived it. I know the ugly part works if you stick with it.

That doesn’t mean repetition is perfect. I recently realized I’ve been holding a guitar pick wrong my entire life. It never mattered for the music I was playing, but now that I’m teaching myself faster, shreddier stuff, it suddenly does. I looked it up and—surprise—I’ve built a bad habit that now needs to be unlearned. That’s the risk of doing anything the same way for decades. Luckily, this one’s an easy fix. You just hold the pick correctly and move on. Still annoying, but fixable.

That kind of calm confidence does not come naturally to me in other creative areas.

Drawing, for example. I haven’t put anywhere near the hours into it that I have into music, and I get discouraged fast when what’s on the page doesn’t match what’s in my head. Intellectually, I know it’s the same deal: do it a thousand times, then a thousand more. Emotionally, my brain starts yelling that I’m running out of time. I worry about forming bad habits that won’t be as easy to fix as a guitar pick grip. I’m older now. I’m impatient. I want to be good now. I don’t have another forty years to sort this out—unless my long-shot plan of becoming a cyborg really comes together.

That’s when I have to let my musician brain sit down and have a talk with whatever other brain is panicking. I have to accept where I am, keep improving with the time I have, and trust that the same ugly process that works in music works everywhere else too.

Which brings me to making videos for YouTube.

I’ve been making videos almost as long as I’ve been making music, but unlike a bass guitar—which hasn’t fundamentally changed since I first picked one up at twelve—the tools for video have mutated nonstop. As a kid, my friends and I shot Super 8 film. Then tape. I went to school for film and worked with 16mm, cutting it the old-fashioned way. Then computers showed up and flipped everything. Now AI is rolling in, and whether that’s good or bad, it’s easily the biggest shift since sound was introduced.

I’m not here to debate AI. My point is that while the rules of visual storytelling stay mostly the same, the tools change so fast it’s exhausting just trying to keep up. It takes me hours—hours—to make a three-minute video. The whole time I’m questioning everything: Is this right? Is this any good? How do I even do this part? Let me Google that. Again. It’s chaotic. It’s inefficient. It’s ugly.

But that’s the process.

So now I’m trying to simplify the goal. Make three minutes of something I’m proud of using the tools I have today. Then make the next video just a little bit better. That’s it. That’s the whole job.

You trust the process. Even when it looks bad. Especially when it looks bad. Because the process is ugly—and that’s how you know it’s working.

Take it easy,

James