Stand on the Shoulders of Giants (and make new mistakes… )
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.” – Socrates
Anything you want to do has been done, and written about… sort of.
I believe there are two key things we can learn from those who have gone before: 1) that the how is laid out before us for just about everything and 2) the possible-ness of just about everything is already established. All that’s left for us is the doing, in our own unique way.
Of course, exactly what you want to do, exactly the way you would do it hasn’t been done, but close enough for you to learn from others and make your own art.*
So, as the classic saying goes: don’t re-invent the wheel.
Use the wheel that already exists to go where you want to go.
Oh, and be sure that the mistakes you make – and you’ll make ’em if you doing something worth-while – are new mistakes.
After all, someone already told you what their mistakes were.
* Art, here, is in the Seth Godin context: whatever you are uniquely suited to do, that the world needs.