Be a creative tryhard

How being an authentic, genuine tryhard can transform your process

In my freshman year of college, I spent a lot of my free time moderating and translating for a Livejournal K-pop community. A few months in, I received this devastating anonymous comment:

You try too hard. And not in a good way.

As a teenager during the peak hipster era, being called out as a tryhard felt like one of the cruelest insults. I yearned to be carefree and blasé and naturally effortless!

Of course I was far from any of these traits, given that I was only eighteen and just starting to discover myself and the world. But the comment still perplexed me. What did it mean to be trying hard, not in a good way? I was translating news articles from Korean to English, compiling fansite resources, and moderating a large online community. What was so bad about putting my best foot forward while doing that?

Ennui from Inside Out 2, aka my teenage defense mechanism

One Great Recession, a global pandemic, and several social media platforms later, trying hard is now often seen as a badge of honor. We live in an age of Tiktok day in the life videos, Substack growth posts, and CNBC Make It profiles of side hustlers. Creatives used to fear selling out; now they fear being unable to sell themselves. What used to be a stigma around visible effort is now a stigma around inconsistency and inauthenticity.

What does it mean to be a tryhard nowadays? Does it still carry a negative connotation? After some research I found that the term “tryhard” still lingers as a gaming term, describing someone so focused on winning that they ruin the fun. Outside of gaming, the term has mostly faded in favor of terms like cringe, fake, or attention seeking.

Given this cultural shift, I propose that creatives should embrace being tryhards.¹ Trying hard is cool! Trying hard in public is even cooler! The key here is not to try haphazardly, but to try intentionally while prioritizing authenticity, connection, and genuine effort.

To dive further into this, here are my definitions of being a “cool” vs “lame” tryhard:

The creative tryhard mindmap

Cool tryhards:

• Are authentic in their ambitions

• Show up for themselves & others

• Give genuine effort

• Openly share their story

• Fail and get back up

Lame tryhards:

• Are desperate to fit in

• Erase their history of failures

• Compete rather than support

• Want to win at all costs

• Close themselves up so they won’t be found out

Creative tryhards have big dreams that they fully own and vocalize, even if they’re intimidated by their own ambitions. Creative tryhards ideate, create, and release their work before anybody cares. Creative tryhards document and show their process in ways that feel genuine. Creative tryhards show up in different social environments and share their perspective, filtering out whatever cultural norms don’t align with them. Creative tryhards start, finish, fail, and quit projects, taking time to reflect before beginning again.

At this point you may be asking, why bother reclaiming the term tryhard? Many subcultures have a practice of reclaiming insults, transforming demoralizing insults into opportunities for building community and challenging societal norms. The embracing of terms such as queer, fat, nerd, or even cringe points to how reclaiming words can change social narratives.

We need to learn to love trying hard. So many budding creatives are blocked by their fears of trying hard, and I don’t just mean devoting time and energy to improve skills. More commonly, artists are blocked on embracing and vocalizing their ambitions so that others can help give support. Or alternatively, artists hesitate to try hard to promote themselves and their work from fear of coming across as annoying or boastful.

I struggle with both of these things too. Publicly owning my ambitions and sharing my work does not come easily. I have many creative projects or products that I have only promoted once or twice, and still more that I have yet to share at all. Even publishing this newsletter that lands in your inbox every week took many years of trial and error before I got into a regular groove.

I’ve also been the lame tryhard before in my misplaced efforts to feel more confident. That anonymous comment I shared in the beginning was probably more about my moments of self-righteousness as a native speaker in the K-pop community than it was about my actual work ethic. And I’ve avoided sharing my background as a software engineer or self-taught beginner at some NYC artist events, wanting to be taken more seriously.

In embracing the tryhard mentality, I am committing to sharing my dreams, my process, and my work. I’ll start by sharing one of my biggest goals, which is to write and illustrate a book on creativity! I’m in the early stages of drafting and often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m trusting that my consistent practice of reading, writing, and drawing will lead me somewhere meaningful.

Another dream of mine is to help budding artists (yes, that’s you!) one on one. If you’d like help moving through your creative practice, book a free discovery call with me!

Will you embrace the invitation to be a creative tryhard? If so, I’d love if you shared your big, scary goals and dreams in the comments. It’d be my pleasure to support and cheer you on too 💛

1. I’d be remiss not to mention author

Leigh Stein

’s full embrace of being a tryhard! See her post “tryhard losers united”.