The Art of the In-Between
The mysterious man playing guitar in the industrial park. *Keep reading, it’ll all make sense.
Lately I’ve been wrestling with the idea of deserving.
That if we haven’t earned the good things — love, rest, success, joy — some invisible cosmic auditor will swoop in and take them away. Like there’s a celestial spreadsheet keeping track of who’s suffered enough to be happy.
For most of my life, I believed that to get the good stuff, I had to suffer first. That joy had to be balanced by hardship. That peace had to be paid for in pain. And even when I got what I thought I wanted — love, success, creativity — it never felt like enough. There was never enough heartbreak to make me feel I’d earned love. Never enough failure to make me feel worthy of success.
Then, the other day, I had this small, strange, perfect moment.
My dad, my son Luca, and I were driving around my hometown — the one I recently moved back to after decades away (aside from a quick year fifteen years ago) — scouting warehouse spaces for my business. Thirty years gone from the city where I grew up, and somehow I was back — midlife, mid-transformation — driving through neighborhoods I’d never noticed before.
We pulled into a quiet industrial park. Luca was asleep in the back seat. I stepped out to peek through the windows of a for-rent building, and somewhere nearby I heard music — faint but unmistakably live. I followed it until I found the source: an older guy, shirtless, in jean cutoffs and a wide-brimmed hat, standing beside an old RV he’d turned into a tiny handmade house. He was playing electric guitar like he was headlining the Hollywood Bowl — full volume, full heart — to an audience of none.
There wasn’t a single person around, yet he was giving everything he had to the moment.
Watching him, I thought: that’s what I want. To create like that. To live like that. To not wait until I feel like I deserve it. To not wait for permission, applause, or validation. To stop rehearsing every possible judgment before daring to show up.
My son, still sleeping in the car, hasn’t learned judgment yet — not of himself, not of others. And that’s what struck me: somewhere along the way, we start judging ourselves and editing our joy. We start believing we have to earn the right to be happy, or creative, or at peace. We start believing we have to deserve it.
But that man in the industrial park — he wasn’t performing for anyone. He was just being.
That’s art. That’s courage. That’s what I want more of — creating because it feels good or making decisions based on joy, not because I’ve earned the right to.
A lot is shifting for me — personally, professionally, creatively. I’m not ready to share the details yet because they’re still unfolding. What I know is this: I’m living in the tension of opposites. Grief and gratitude. Fear and freedom. Endings and beginnings. One minute I’m crying on my office floor; the next I’m belting Led Zeppelin’s Going to California with the windows down. Both are true.
And it’s not so different from the creative process, is it?
That uncomfortable middle part where you don’t know if what you’re making is beautiful or a total disaster. When you’ve outgrown the old version of yourself but haven’t yet met the new one. When you can’t go back, but don’t yet know how to move forward.
That’s the season I’m in — the in-between.
And maybe you are too.
If so, here’s what I’m reminding myself (and you):
You don’t have to earn your way out of uncertainty. You don’t have to prove yourself worthy of joy. You don’t have to rush the clarity. You just have to stay long enough for it to arrive.
Keep creating. Keep showing up through the uncertainty.
Every painting, poem, business, and big life decision starts here — in the not-knowing.
And that’s what Craftcation — our conference for creatives — reminds me of every year. It’s not a place for people who have it all figured out. It’s a home for the in-betweeners — the experimenters, the ones brave enough to start before they feel ready or deserving. It’s where we gather to create without proof, to connect without pretense, to find our footing together in the mess.
So here’s to that man in the industrial park.
Here’s to crying on the floor and singing on the freeway.
Here’s to unfinished projects, unsteady hands, and uncertain hearts.
Here’s to remembering that you don’t have to deserve the good things — you just have to let yourself have them.
Here’s to the messy middle — the part no one Instagrams, but where all the real transformation happens.
Love,
Nicole S.
