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Obscurity is a Gift
You have a great idea, you write a blog post in five minutes, you post it.
A friend reads it, they message you and say, “Hey, I know you had the best intentions, did you consider how this could be misinterpreted?”
Oops, you didn’t. You misspoke, and could be easily misunderstood. No big deal. You take the blog post down, and it was like you never posted it at all. No harm, no foul.
That’s the gift of obscurity.
You’re free to do what you like; you don’t have a personal brand to maintain, you don’t have all eyes on you, you don’t have the pressures of living up to a previous reputation or expectation.
Obscurity is one reason why artists make incredible, trailblazing, work in their early years, but eventually make work that sounds more average. It’s not only that the world has caught up with them; it’s that they’re paying for the cost of fame in their creative process. There’s too much at stake for them to take risks. If you’re working in obscurity, you won’t face that challenge.
When I was writing Creative Doing, I interviewed author Michelle Kuo who echoed this point:
“The most important thing I can tell you is to relish writing in obscurity. I feel that I was the happiest as a writer when I was in hiding, when I was invisible, when I was secretly writing…
