The Pleasure of Being Bad at Something Nobody Is Grading

I painted a teapot recently. The Royal Academy can stand down.

It came out looking like a slipper that had just received disappointing news. The handle appeared to be trying to leave. The spout suggested an old injury. The shadow underneath had no working relationship with physics.

I was delighted. Not with the painting. Let us not lose our heads. I was delighted because nobody was grading it.

Nobody needed it by Thursday. Nobody was going to compare it with last quarter's teapot. There was no improvement plan, no stakeholder feedback, no man called Darren explaining that the teapot did not align with the wider strategic direction. Just me, some paper, some paint, and an object that had already suffered enough.

For most of adult life we are not really allowed to be bad at things. We are bad at plenty, of course. But the arrangement does not encourage cheerful incompetence. Work runs on competence. Bills, journeys, repairs, forms and small emergencies all require you to be capable, or at least capable-looking, which is a separate and exhausting skill.

Then retirement turns up and quietly hands you a strange gift. You may now be rubbish at something.

It is harder than it sounds. The old machinery objects. It asks what the point is. It asks whether this is productive. It asks whether you might become good at it eventually, because apparently even leisure must now submit a growth forecast.

I have come to distrust the question "What is the point?" It has bullied too many harmless things. The point of painting a bad teapot may simply be painting a bad teapot. The point of singing slightly behind the note may be standing among other people and making a noise without apology. The point of learning something slowly may be the slowness.

We spent decades turning ourselves into instruments. Reliable, tuned, useful, acceptable. There is dignity in that, and I would not take it back. But there is a cost. Play starts to look suspicious. If a thing cannot be improved, measured, displayed or defended, we no longer know which shelf to put it on.

Later life, it turns out, has that shelf.

I have not worked out what to do with the teapot. It is on the fridge, looking faintly wounded. I am told this is progress.

The full piece, including why being cheerfully bad at something may be the quietest kind of courage retirement offers, is on The Old Grey Thinker: The Pleasure of Being Bad at Something Nobody Is Grading.

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This, unbelievably, is not backed by a gleaming media empire, a glass office, or a man called Hugo in brand partnerships. It is one old grey thinker, several unreasonable opinions, and enough Yorkshire Tea to refloat a modest ferry.

So if this piece made you laugh, mutter "that's true," or stare into the middle distance like a pensioner who has just discovered the price of printer ink, do the decent thing.

Take out an annual subscription to The Old Grey Thinker. Read another piece on Medium. Buy me a tea. Or pick up The Second Act Playbook or The Creator Library.

It will not bankrupt you.

It may even improve your character.

And frankly, given the heroic public service I am performing by being this wise, this underfunded, and this magnificently cool, I think we can all agree I deserve it.