The Art of Ugly
You’re not behind. You’re just in the middle.
If your Notes app doesn’t look like a manifesto written during a caffeine blackout, are you even trying?
Mine’s a fever dream. It looks like a mix between the Zodiac killer and the most pretentious film school kid you’ve ever met. It’s fragments of thoughts, voice memos I don’t remember recording, autocorrected nonsense, and cryptic one-liners like “make it hurt but make it mean something.” My desktop is full of files like “REAL_draft_final_final2_TRUSTME.” Actually, here’s a real screenshot of my desktop.
This is the part of the creative process no one glamorizes. We talk about creativity like it’s all clarity. Like one day you’re hit with a lightning bolt of inspiration, and the next, your masterpiece is complete and you’re off to the next thing. But most of the time, creativity feels like decoding a language you’re inventing as you go. You’re scribbling in the dark, trying to find it. Flinching at your own annoying voice and still forcing it out anyway.
It’s not pretty. It’s not meant to be. This is the middle—the part that doesn’t get posted, but the part that makes the end possible.
Ugly is the middle. And most of life happens in the middle.
There’s this quiet lie baked into the way we talk about success, creativity, healing, whatever—the idea that you’re either stuck or you’ve made it. Either lost or found. But the middle is where it actually happens. The middle is where things are still wobbly and unclear. Where you’re unsure, inconsistent, or uncomfortable. It’s not linear. It’s not graceful. But it’s where you build the thing, become the person, and shape the story.
We don’t post the middle because it doesn’t come with clean edges. It’s not screenshot-worthy. It’s hard to summarize the season of life where you’re not quite falling apart, but definitely not put together either. Where you’re still figuring it out, or maybe you’ve been “figuring it out” for years.
But the middle is honest. It’s where your work starts having fingerprints. It’s where your life starts having substance. It’s not optimized or “aesthetic”. It’s real.
And somewhere in the middle of the rambling notes, unsent emails, awkward drafts, and hard conversations, you start to recognize the shape of something that matters. Something that wasn’t there before. Something that had to be earned, not just discovered.
We love things that look effortless.
That poem that feels like it was written in one breath. That photo that looks like it just happened to catch the light. That performance that feels relaxed, natural, and fluid. But the smoother something looks on the outside, the more likely it’s been sanded down by hours of invisible, unglamorous work.
What we’re really seeing isn’t ease, it’s editing. Practice. Repetition. The accumulation of tiny moments where someone could’ve quit, but didn’t. The only reason something looks effortless is because someone suffered through the part you’re in right now.
We forget that because most people are smart enough not to show us the bloopers. The breakdowns. The multiple deleted drafts. All we see is the highlight, so we assume they’re just better than us. More talented, more inspired, more certain. But that’s the illusion. We confuse the end result with the process, and end up thinking there’s something wrong with ours.
But here’s the thing: ease is not the same as skill. Real skill is being able to tolerate the ugly part long enough to shape something that eventually feels inevitable. You don’t get there by skipping the hard parts; you get there by walking through them so many times they stop scaring you.
So if it feels hard right now, if it feels clumsy, if you’re staring at something that feels like it’s never going to click… good. That means you’re in it. That means you’re doing it. The work doesn’t get easier. You just get better at surviving the ugly parts.
Some of the best things I’ve ever made were born out of embarrassment, not excellence.
It’s easy to romanticize progress when you’re looking backward. You trace a clean arc and pretend you knew what you were doing the whole time. But in the moment, it rarely feels brave. It feels awkward. It feels loud. It feels like something you’ll regret posting. You don’t feel like someone stepping into their purpose. You feel like someone oversharing on the internet at 2 a.m.
But shame is a weird kind of fuel. It tells you where the edge is. It shows you where you care. If you can stay with it long enough, if you don’t run from it or disguise it, it usually means you’re close to something true.
We spend so much energy trying not to look foolish that we forget something important. Looking foolish is how you start to sound like yourself. You don’t find your voice by getting it right. You find it by getting it wrong enough times to know the difference.
That’s the part no one can shortcut. Not the confident artist. Not the successful founder. Not the person whose work you secretly compare yours to. The only way out is through. You have to write the bad version before the good one. You have to say the wrong thing before you understand what the right thing even is.
It’s not fun. It’s not cute. But it’s necessary.
If you wait until the work is uncringe, unembarrassing, and perfectly articulate—you’ll be waiting forever.
We keep asking, “When will it be ready?”
Maybe the better question is, “When will I be brave enough to show it?”
That’s the hard part. Letting something be seen while it’s still in motion. Sharing the version that feels uncertain, unfinished, and maybe even a little off. But also real. And alive. And honest in a way the polished version might never be.
The internet rewards polish. Real life rewards persistence.
If you’re waiting to feel totally sure about your work, your voice, or your choices, you’ll wait forever. Readiness is a myth. Clarity usually comes after the leap, not before.
So no, your Notes app isn’t supposed to make sense yet. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. That means you’re in it.
The goal was never perfection. The goal was to try anyway.
Keep creating and repeating,
Zack
P.S.
🏀 Courts: Every outdoor basketball court in the U.S., mapped. A massive visual project combining public data and design.
🤖 Machines Will Not Replace Us: A short essay on the limits of AI and why the messy, imperfect parts of creativity still matter.
🛠️ AppStacks: A site highlighting well-built apps and the stories behind them. No flexing, just the tools and thinking that went into making something good.
🍷 Wine Animals: A combination of data and web design exploring the correlation between animals on wine labels and the cost or quality of the bottle.
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Create.Repeat is a community for creatives.
The Create.Repeat Substack is a project designed to be a weekly diary on creativity. Sharing inspiration for artists to keep creating and repeating.
Written and curated by Zack Evans & James Warren Taylor
Each week we will be sharing recent thoughts on creativity, some links helping us stay creative, and a talent show featuring an artist from the community. Thank you for engaging with us.
History repeats. Create the future.
this gave my soul so much life, thank you!