Beginner's Luck
Thoughts on starting fresh.
Let’s reconnect.
It’s been a bit over a month since I last shared with you here. In that time I’ve been to and through Chicago only to landed in Mexico City, where I’ve arrived with a beginner’s mindest.
My intention of learning Spanish and reconnecting traces back to last year when I stayed here for two and a half months. Returning in the way I did, surviving on savings and without a home lined up was risky. Financially risky, yes, and moreso a risk on my sense of comfort and self. I’ve rarely gone without the assurance of knowing where I would live in a month’s time, as was the case when I left Toronto in December. Perhaps it’s a privelege born out of scarcity — fear of unknowing and my own personaly comfort-drive — and I’m learning how it means lean into the mystery of being a beginner.
I’m offering a free Poetics of Place counter-mapping workshop on Thursday, 08 February, for the first time in a long time. Scroll down to learn more! Already convinced, click here to register!
So far, my time here has felt easy yet pointed — as if a needle trained due-north amidst an entire electromagnetic spectrum of noise, or the satisfying movement of a fine fountain pen on hot-pressed paper. My days begin early, rising with the sun as to benefit from the quiet of early monring mind, and studying, writing job and residency applications, and working on the side throughout the days. I started taking intensive Spanish classes as well as online courses in Toronto Metropolitan University’s Publishing program on my second day back in Mexico City. This education feels more important than ever. After the past 4 years of reconnecting with myself and my passion, the choice to learn new skills highlights the fine edges between myself and everything else.
Professional educations in the world of publishing comes wtih its own set of gifts and challenges, while learning a new language in-context presents a challenge to self unlike really anything else. In order for me to learn the best I can, I need a beginner’s mindset.
To be a beginner is to know nearly nothing, to commit to learning and carefully push the edges of who one is, and, in doing so, embrace realms of possibility otherwise unimaginable. To be a beginner is not to be an expert. It’s reconnecting with the play, fear, and awe inside of me that comes with learning something new. Learning something new, like the ins and outs of an industry I’ve only worked with tangentially or a completely new way expressing ideas and feelings, requires me to leave parts of myself behind. Taking that risk, I see the entry of some miracle we call beginner’s luck.
Citing the Cambridge English Dictionnary, Wikipedia refers to beginner’s luck as : “the phenomenon of novices experiencing disproportionate frequency of success or succeeding against an expert in a given activity.” There’s a point to be made about achieving greater success or reaping more rewards as a beginner compared to experts, but here I don’t wish to compare my luck to others’. That sounds like a recipe for bad luck.
What I find so miraculous about beginner’s luck is that becoming a beginner, at least for me, is a scary endeavour. I have to compeltely renogtiate the idea of who I am and what I am capable of. Yet, when I truly let go of the expectation to be perfect, or even good, and embrace the idea of being good enough, my experience of being (period) is at its best.
A beginner’s mindset is something I’ve been practicing since I decided to start embracing my creativity a few years back, but I didn’t necessarily know that was what I was doing. Leaving what one knows well behind to move into the space of not knowing (of mysetry), and opening up the possibility of struggle and change, is probably the best definition of learning I have. Call me naïve, but I think that beginner’s luck may strike anyone who assumes this mindset.
I’m very please to have the chance to offer Poetics of Place for free & online to anyone interested in learning about counter-mapping and connecting with folks engaging with unconventional ways of working with space & place.
I first offered this workshop to a group of artists and researchers in Toronto in on 09 July, 2022, and then again for the Queer Ecologies Research Collective at Mildred’s Lane on 09 July, 2023! This is the project that birthed the book COUNTER-MAP: A Poetics of Place, which has found homes in homes and collections on 4 continents! Join me on 08 February, 2024 for two hours of poetic reflection on our relationship to the worlds around us.
Join Darian Razdar's Poetics of Place workshop to learn about counter-mapping and explore creative ways to engage with the places around you. The 2-hour workshop will be a mix of presentations, activities, and discussion. Participants will leave with a new perspective on maps and counter-mapping, being able to integrate place-based practices in a new light.
08 February, 2024
6:00 - 8:00PM EST (Toronto)
Register in advance to receive the zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrd-urqjMjG9WSfg1OZ5L2cC-xdJ5IYTN7#/registration
This workshop is presented as part of Virtual Grounds: Platforms, a research-creation residency for new media artists.
Virtual Grounds: Platforms is generously supported by Canada Council for the Arts.