I was hunched over my latest pocket-notebook prototype when i noticed a barely perceptible flaw in the stitching. That tiny imperfection, barely a fraction of a millimetre, sent me spiralling into full-blown despair; a sinking feeling that I simply wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t just frustration. It was shame, and not the kind you can brush off with a deep breath and a cup of coffee. It was the all-too-familiar flavour of having fallen short of an invisible standard i’ve been dragging around for decades.

I remember the day eight-year-old me handed in a short story that my stern teacher begrudgingly called ‘rather good’. I’d written it in one sitting, barely stopping to think. The praise came fast, and with it, the labels: gifted, bright, promising. Wunderkind. At that age, it felt incredible. I could do things effortlessly that others had to work at.

I didn’t yet understand the weight that sort of praise can carry — the way it seeps into your identity and quietly rewires your understanding of effort, success and worth. What began as a warm glow of achievement hardened into an anxious edge. Over time, being ‘talented’ came to mean that everything i made had to be brilliant — or else i wasn’t.

That, in a nutshell, is the beating heart of what people have started calling ’wunderkind syndrome’. George Foster describes the long hangover from being labelled exceptional as a child. You grow up expecting greatness from yourself, not occasionally, but all the time.

You become terrified of mediocrity, and worse, paralysed by the idea of making mistakes in public. It’s not just about perfectionism; it’s a tangled knot of self-doubt, overidentification with your output, and an almost allergic reaction to the idea of incremental progress. Foster talks about how wunderkinds often stall in adulthood — not because they stop being creative or intelligent, but because their inner voice insists that if it’s not instant genius, it’s worthless.

That idea rings embarrassingly true to me. Somewhere along the way, i stopped allowing myself to make rough drafts. I began expecting every first attempt to be praiseworthy. So when i sit down to make something – like my notebooks – and it isn’t perfect right away, i feel like i’ve failed not just at the task, but at being myself. It sounds dramatic when you spell it out like that, but the feeling is insidious. A stray glue smear, a slight misalignment of the cover, a stitch ever so off-axis, each came to feel like a verdict on my very being. It’s exhausting, frankly, and it robs the process of joy.

Camille DeAngelis writes about our culture’s obsession with early success. We celebrate the prodigy, the overnight success, the teenaged entrepreneur, rarely the slow-burn artist or the late bloomer. That scarcity mindset – believing that there’s only a brief window to prove your genius – can leave former wunderkinds stuck in a loop of anxiety and self-sabotage. Creativity should be a sustainable, lifelong practice, not a panicked sprint towards premature peak performance.

The truth is, i’ve started to long for something quieter. A creative life where progress doesn’t have to be dramatic, where small victories count, and where making something a little wonky still counts as making something. That’s why these notebooks have become oddly important. They’re simple objects – paper, glue, thread – but they give me space to practise being content with imperfection. Each one becomes a quiet rebellion against the idea that everything has to be perfect.

Some have warped covers. Some have wonky corners. Some have crooked stitches. I keep them anyway as a way to remind myself they’re enough. I’m enough. I’m trying to reframe the process as one of discovery, not judgement. That doesn’t mean lowering my standards,  it means recognizing that mistakes aren’t moral failings. Of course, this doesn’t come naturally. I still feel that old twinge when something doesn’t go right on the first go, but i’m forcing myself to sit with that discomfort instead of draining myself by suppressing it.

I’m trying to be amused, not ashamed, by my mistakes. They’re part of the deal. A mistake isn’t a referendum on my value as a person. It’s a mistake. That’s it. Letting go of wunderkind baggage isn’t about forgetting the praise or pretending talent doesn’t exist. It’s about unhooking your sense of worth from your ability to impress. It’s about choosing craft over performance. And above all, it’s about making space for joy again — for that curious, playful feeling that made me want to write and make things in the first place.

Making something with my hands isn’t a test. It’s a conversation with my materials, my expectations, and my old inner wunderkind, who’s probably sulking in the corner because i didn’t win a medal today. He can sulk all he wants. I’ve got notebooks to make.