✦ Living in The Gap
Why Ira Glass was right: your taste will always outrun your capacity
There is a video of Ira Glass I return to when the creative work feels unbearable. He talks about “The Gap.”
It’s the most surgical diagnosis of creative suffering I’ve encountered. We get into this work because we have good taste. We can hear the thing that doesn’t exist yet. But for years, sometimes decades, what we actually make falls short.
It has ambition. It has flashes of what we’re reaching for. But it doesn’t land.
And because our taste is so good, we know exactly how far short it falls. We can hear the distance between the melody in our head and the one struggling to come to life in our studio. We can feel the chasm between the vision and the draft.
That gap will swallow you if you let it.
Living in The Gap right now
As I type, I’m in it. ( ritual ) creative is still being born.
I’m doing the work. The essays ship. The systems are booting up. And yet, the gap between vision and execution feels like physical weight.
Ira Glass names it perfectly:
“The only way to close the gap is to do a huge volume of work… It’s only by going through a volume of work that you’ll catch up and close that gap.”
He’s right. We need the reps.
But here’s the harder question: How do you survive doing a huge volume of work when your vision outstrips your execution?
For years, I thought the answer was “head down, execute.” That’s not it. It’s about how we frame the work.
The trap: “self-expression” makes The Gap unbearable
When we frame creativity as self-expression, the work becomes a referendum on identity.
A mediocre draft means you are mediocre.
Work that falls short means you are not enough.
Silence after you ship means nobody cares.
The stakes become existential. Rick Rubin says it this way:
“A work of art is a reflection of the artist at a given moment in time. It is not the artist.”
When you frame work as self-expression, you’re saying: If this work is rejected, I am rejected.
No wonder The Gap feels unbearable.
The reframe: creation as self-discovery
There’s a more survivable frame: creativity as self-discovery.
You’re not creating to express what you already know. You’re creating to discover what you don’t yet know.
The frame shifts from “I know myself, therefore I create” to “I create, therefore I get to know myself.”
The questions change:
Am I good enough?What can this teach me?
What I’m discovering in real time
I’m in the middle of this reframe with ( ritual ) creative.
I committed to weekly shipping. MSB—Minimum Shippable Beauty—as the standard. And here’s what’s brutal: I can hear exactly how far my work falls short of what I’m reaching for. The vision is clear. The execution? Still finding its way.
But when I ask what I’m discovering about myself as an artist? Things shift.
I’m discovering that shipping (and promoting) my own work is existential in ways client work never was. For clients, I deliver flawlessly because it doesn’t threaten my identity. For my own work? I can hear every compromise, every place I didn’t quite nail it. The Gap is undeniable.
I’m discovering the frameworks emerge through shipping, not before it. I had perspectives around MSB, but the framework crystallized only when I committed to the post. The act of making clarifies the thinking. Recursive.
I’m discovering the inner voice has a thousand reasons to quit. This isn’t ready. You haven’t found your voice yet. Maybe start a different project. Some of that may be true. But the commitment to ship regularly is sacred. And miraculously, you rise to the occasion.
None of these discoveries close The Gap. My taste is still ahead of my execution. But I’m building something more important than perfect work: my capacity to keep making despite The Gap.
The shadow work nobody mentions
Here’s what nobody tells you: The creative process is a dredging.
You commit to showing up regularly, and all your patterns surface. The perfectionism. The people-pleasing. The fear of judgment. This is the mud.
The deadline forces you to confront everything you’ve been avoiding.
This is where you realize: You need a bigger container than hustle alone.
Art as spiritual practice
Here is where the spiritual dimension becomes essential.
Contemplative traditions point to a crucial distinction: the small self that gets crushed by The Gap, and the spacious awareness that can hold it all.
Small self: Your ego. Your identity. Your wounds. The part that’s terrified The Gap means you’re not enough. The voice that says maybe you should quit.
Spacious awareness: The witnessing presence underneath. The part that can observe fear without being consumed by it. The loving space that holds everything without collapsing.
Advaita Vedanta calls this Atman—the true Self that is ultimately inseparable from everything. Buddhism points to it differently, emphasizing the emptiness of even the witness. But both traditions offer the same practical insight: you are vaster than your fear.
If you try to navigate The Gap from small self alone, you’ll get crushed. The judgment is too heavy. The fear too loud.
But if you can rest in spacious awareness—even briefly—you create room for the mess. You can watch your fear of judgment without being the fear. You can hold the gap between your taste and your current capacity without making it mean you’re not enough.
Pema Chödrön writes in When Things Fall Apart:
“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
To keep creating despite The Gap, you have to practice expanding beyond the small self that can’t tolerate discomfort.
Self-discovery is the path that makes The Gap survivable.
Self-realization is the container that makes self-discovery possible.
Creativity is the practice that forces you to walk this path whether you intended to or not.
The invitation
If you’ve been stuck in The Gap—waiting to feel ready, waiting for your work to be good enough—consider this:
The Gap isn’t the problem. How you’re relating to The Gap is the problem.
You don’t need to close The Gap to keep creating. You need to build your capacity to create despite The Gap.
That’s the work. Not making better art. Becoming the kind of person who can hold what making art dredges up.
The Gap never closes completely. Your taste will always evolve ahead of your capacity.
But you can become vast enough to hold it all.
∞
What is your relationship to The Gap right now? Drop a comment.
In rhythm,
Benjamin