APX-VI-0061
“I left the critic's seat and got down into the dust myself.”
For years you critiqued from the stands, safe and uninvolved, telling yourself the door was closed to you. You walked through it. Now your face is in the dust and sweat and you're attempting things that can actually fail. That's the only place anything real gets built. Stay down here. The critic's seat was never going to count.
Your Practice
- Name what you used to critique from the stands that you're now attempting.
- Accept the dust and sweat as the cost of actually being in it.
- Refuse to retreat to the stands when it gets hard. Critics risk nothing.
- Do one more thing this week that can visibly fail. That's the arena.
The Architects
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, 'Citizenship in a Republic,' the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910