how do you become good at something you want to be good at?
keeping it real with myself: if I didn’t want the interview to be about fashion, maybe I shouldn’t have gone to a curated fashion store. last wednesday afternoon, i went to historic chinatown in vancouver and i spoke with jackie from commune. meixi of provoke and jackie of smithereen came together to form commune. meixi was at work so i went over to the shop, sat with jackie for 50 minutes and tried some clothes on for another 25.
the first time I met jackie was during a community-organized bike ride. as is the case with many people I meet, essie introduced me to him. i have a clear memory of him pulling up to the ride in jeans and top. jackie and meixi have come over for a hard liver library visit, i’ve been by to their store with friends and the last time i saw them was in july for essie’s birthday party on my back patio.
it wasn’t my first interview ever. i’ve been on both sides of the conversation as interviewer and interviewee. one of my earliest interview memories was an interview with my favorite professor, craig leonard - my introduction to printed matter and book arts. my favorite interview of all time was with artist tam vu, a recorded conversation through zoom, carefully and intentionally transcribed to be shared in the form of a zine. my first interview in river blog-form was with balladsoldier about living at the edge of every dream.
this past spring, taylor from offbrand library and i interviewed each other in a three-part series about printed ephemera. alongside our one-on-one conversation we street-style interviewed people who came to our collection of print at alterior.
my experience as the interviewee is less frequent but if asked with an interesting angle, i’m pretty open to it. cecilia from hey! wanna hang? interviewed me in april with a meaningful selection of questions. if you’re interested in poking around in my past, there’s an article from the coast (halifax, ns based newspaper) from 2020. a physical clipping sits framed at my parent’s place. and most recently, roman from river and i recently sat down at each of our own laptops to speak with simi for an interview in an emerging publication. coming soon…
in some ways, i’ve been “interviewing” you for the last year. i went back and counted all the the calls on my calendar. 139 conversations over a year of time. joey and i tag-teamed most of the early conversations, i graduated to doing them on my own and we had an iconic call with the whole la friend group. this morning, joey asked me if i remember who our very first call was with. our friend emily, currently a hard learner over at harvard gsd (getting ready to take over the world).
these conversations weren’t structured as interviews but through a series of questions and answers, i got to know you. through a specific context such as sharing what we were working on, hearing your thoughts and feedback and getting to know what you do - we connected.
i sat down for a couple hours before my interview with jackie to prepare. i did some due diligence to find previous interviews or articles but i thought i would go with the flow on the questions. i didn’t provide jackie with an angle or much direction. in reflection, i didn’t set up the interview for success as i walked in with my phone, ipad and a mic set and great hopes.
exactly 4 days later, informed by my learnings and experience through the first version with jackie, i scheduled another interview. i brought along a friend to help and focused less on trying to perform a good interview but more on the conversation. less-expectant and more open.
some of my most fruitful conversations have been an unscheduled phone call at 10am. my most meaningful ideas have been conceived, planned, and executed within a couple of days or under two weeks. my most meaningful interactions have been unexpected and surprising.
sometimes being good at something feels like it just happens…. but being good at something doesn’t happen from doing something once or twice. it’s something you become. you develop the skill through practice and discipline and it requires effort. through doing a series of things over and over again, your effort becomes instinct. you’re beyond consciously “trying” and the effort has become integrated to you.
being effortless transcends being good — it's driven by instinct. awareness and action find synchronicity. but being good at something, having instinct, or being effortless doesn’t come from doing nothing.
sometimes i feel almost effortless. when i rely on instinct it allows for me to make my idea, a good idea. do something, and be good at it. to make decisions without hesitation.
less desire to be good at something and more doing is where i’m at right now. and being good at something will become.