Maybe it's not bad. Maybe it's just not for you.

The creative freedom of not caring how your work is perceived.

I recently saw clips of Justin Bieber at Coachella.
You might have seen them too.

They showed him with a laptop.
No big production. No polished spectacle.

He was literally pulling up YouTube videos and singing along with them on stage.

It almost felt like an anti-performance.

Stripped down. Unfiltered. A little messy.
And very real.

I liked it.

You could feel that he wasn’t trying to impress.
He wasn’t trying to be anything other than who he was.

And people had very different reactions to that.

Some thought it was incredible.
Some thought it was terrible.

Some saw authenticity.
Others saw a lack of effort.

But that’s the interesting part.

People say things like “that was great” or “that was awful” as if their opinion is a fact.
As if their judgment of something is some sort of objective truth.

But it isn’t.

It just means it wasn’t for them.

And there’s something quietly freeing about seeing it that way.
Because it shifts how you relate to what you create.
And it frees you to create whatever you want.

If people like it, great. It was for them.
If people don’t like it, that’s fine. It wasn’t for them.

I learned that in a much more personal way.

I was in a creative writing course, because I love writing, and for my first assignment I wrote a poem about a cardinal.

It was really about my uncle, who died quite young. My grandparents thought a cardinal represented him. When they saw a cardinal, they felt connected to their son.

So this topic, this poem, meant something to me.

I turned it in to the professor, and it came back covered in red ink.
I got a D.

And, at that time in my life, I was afraid of grades that low. I thought they meant something about me.

And, turns out, I was also afraid of my poem getting dissected, scrutinized, and evaluated to bits. Because it meant something to me.

In those moments, when we outsource our self-worth to some sort of activity or opinion, we are vulnerable.

I remember thinking:

Maybe I’m not good at this.
Maybe I shouldn’t be writing.
Maybe everyone who ever said they liked my writing was lying.

That’s where the mind goes.

It takes one person’s opinion and turns it into a conclusion about your identity.

But that poem wasn’t bad.

It just wasn’t for that professor.
It was for me.

It took me years to realize that I never wrote for others.
I wrote for myself.

There’s a difference.

A real one.

Because when I stopped writing, even briefly, I felt it.

Not in some abstract, philosophical way.
In my body. In my mood. In my life.

I felt off.
Flat.

My means of expression was gone.
And the opposite of expression is depression.

A heaviness, a darkness, consumed my life.

I was disconnected from something that was natural to me.

And that’s the part that matters.

Not the feedback.
Not the grade.

The natural expression of who we are.

That’s what matters.

Yet we are trained to treat external opinion as what matters most, often very early on in life. We are conditioned to value others’ opinions about us over our own.

So we look outward.

For approval.
For validation.
For confirmation that what you’re doing is “good.”

And slowly, without realizing it, you start editing yourself.

You start shaping what you create based on how it might be received. And there’s a cost.

You lose contact with the thing that made you want to create in the first place.

Because the truth is, not everything you create is meant for everyone.

Most of it isn’t.

And when you really see that and accept that, something relaxes.

You stop trying to make universally liked things.
You stop trying to be universally understood.

You start creating from a different place. A much more authentic place. And from that place you do your best stuff.

The same way a song can mean everything to one person and nothing to another…
the same way a performance can land deeply for some and completely miss for others… your work, your expression, your way of being will do the same.

That’s not a flaw.

That’s the nature of it.

And when you stop taking that personally, when you stop becoming preoccupied with the reception of your creations, you get something back.

Access.

Access to your own voice.
Your own instincts.
Your own way of seeing things.

The part of you that knew the poem mattered before anyone else read it.

That’s the part worth listening to.

Because when you don’t, when you let one response define the whole thing, you don’t just lose a piece of work… you risk losing the part of you that created it.

And that’s a much bigger loss.

So now, when something doesn’t land with someone, I don’t rush to make it mean something about me.

I just let it be what it is.

Not for them.

And I keep going.

Because I know what happens when I don’t.

And I know what happens when I do.