How can I learn to accept that perfect is the enemy of good?
December 1, 2015 3:04 AM Subscribe
You're an artist who has suffered crippling self doubt and self-loathing, and you've either got past it or found coping mechanisms. How did you do it? How can I do the same?
I am, among other things, a photographer and an artist. I hold myself back from making the kind of art that I want to make because I fear that I am already, before trying, a failure -- because I'll never be good enough to be any good. I know -- and have often said to others -- that "perfect is the enemy of good," and yet I can make myself utterly miserable with the idea that I don't know what I'm doing and fear that I might be a Dunning Kruger victim without knowing. How do I get past all this and just enjoy creating stuff I want to create?
There's a common flow to how it feels to be me when I'm setting up a photoshoot. I start out excited at the possibilities, then I start planning furiously, then everything starts to come together and I start worrying about not being good enough to work with the talent that I've booked for the shoot, then I see the work of my friends, then I know them all to be phenomenal successes and I a worthless failure, then I want to throw away all my camera gear and give up and walk away and never have it hurt again.
Eventually I'll push through this latter phase and do the shoot, and hate the results for about 72 hours, and then I'll be begrudgingly proud of them, perhaps.
I know, I know, a lot of this is just being-an-artist-of-any-stripe and I should get over it, but my gods it hurts. Reassurances from loved ones just make it worse (my brain tells me "they must think you're really rubbish to have to keep reassuring you like that; how pathetic you must look"). Sometimes it's gotten so bad that I've started having pigeon thoughts, stupid things about hurting myself so that I can never try to make a picture again, or hurling all my camera equipment in to the sea or something like that. I can mostly cope with those by just acknowledging them and then moving on, but I'd really rather be able to do what my creative friends seem to do -- make stuff, enjoy making it, make more stuff. I often like to say that my motto is "Quit whining and make something," and that's true, but I wish it wasn't so damn difficult to get going!
I know that it always looks easier from the outside, but this seriously holds me back from even trying half the time, and if there was one wish I could have for 2016 it would be that I could not be crippled by my own brain. I am completely aware that a lot of this is cognitive distortion and I would love to be able to bring rational thought to bear on the problem, but it often seems like rational thought is just not powerful enough.
Any advice is welcome, Mefites.
I am, among other things, a photographer and an artist. I hold myself back from making the kind of art that I want to make because I fear that I am already, before trying, a failure -- because I'll never be good enough to be any good. I know -- and have often said to others -- that "perfect is the enemy of good," and yet I can make myself utterly miserable with the idea that I don't know what I'm doing and fear that I might be a Dunning Kruger victim without knowing. How do I get past all this and just enjoy creating stuff I want to create?
There's a common flow to how it feels to be me when I'm setting up a photoshoot. I start out excited at the possibilities, then I start planning furiously, then everything starts to come together and I start worrying about not being good enough to work with the talent that I've booked for the shoot, then I see the work of my friends, then I know them all to be phenomenal successes and I a worthless failure, then I want to throw away all my camera gear and give up and walk away and never have it hurt again.
Eventually I'll push through this latter phase and do the shoot, and hate the results for about 72 hours, and then I'll be begrudgingly proud of them, perhaps.
I know, I know, a lot of this is just being-an-artist-of-any-stripe and I should get over it, but my gods it hurts. Reassurances from loved ones just make it worse (my brain tells me "they must think you're really rubbish to have to keep reassuring you like that; how pathetic you must look"). Sometimes it's gotten so bad that I've started having pigeon thoughts, stupid things about hurting myself so that I can never try to make a picture again, or hurling all my camera equipment in to the sea or something like that. I can mostly cope with those by just acknowledging them and then moving on, but I'd really rather be able to do what my creative friends seem to do -- make stuff, enjoy making it, make more stuff. I often like to say that my motto is "Quit whining and make something," and that's true, but I wish it wasn't so damn difficult to get going!
I know that it always looks easier from the outside, but this seriously holds me back from even trying half the time, and if there was one wish I could have for 2016 it would be that I could not be crippled by my own brain. I am completely aware that a lot of this is cognitive distortion and I would love to be able to bring rational thought to bear on the problem, but it often seems like rational thought is just not powerful enough.
Any advice is welcome, Mefites.
Read page 22 of Twila Tharp's "The Creative Habit".
Well the whole book. :-) But this brain stuff is one reason being locked into a deadline helps push past the noise.
posted by sammyo at 3:55 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well the whole book. :-) But this brain stuff is one reason being locked into a deadline helps push past the noise.
posted by sammyo at 3:55 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Something I've find helpful is to do creative projects with a regular deadline and an expectation that they will be crap and no expectation you will make them public. Focus on the completion. For instance "I'm going to take a photo of myself every day for the next two weeks." If you manage to do this you succeed and congratulate yourself no matter how awful you think the photos are.
posted by Erberus at 4:04 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Erberus at 4:04 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
The fact that you're aware that you're having these cognitive distortions makes it seem like you would be a good candidate for therapy, specifically CBT which would provide you with specific actionable strategies to deal with the thoughts that seem to be paralyzing you.
Like sammyo I also recommend reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit and listening to Ira Glass' talk on storytelling talk on storytelling. The former really shows how the framework/process of creating can be about working and the latter (I think part 3/4) is about why you should become more ok with making stuff that is not up to your own standards of taste, but how that process of making bad stuff can be helpful to getting to the point where you make better stuff.
I think it's also common to be much more self critical than other people about your work. You might have a distorted view of how happy your creative friends are about their work and overestimating how much they are enjoying making their work. In the studio where I am, about 90% of the serious about their work people are constantly critical about their own work. Outsiders also think that it must be so much fun to do the art that I make, but the reality is that I am not having fun when I make stuff, I am doing a kind of work that I am interested in and want to do because I sometimes get satisfaction from the end product. To me it's not fun in the way that hanging out with friends or going out dancing is fun.
posted by tangaroo at 4:40 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
Like sammyo I also recommend reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit and listening to Ira Glass' talk on storytelling talk on storytelling. The former really shows how the framework/process of creating can be about working and the latter (I think part 3/4) is about why you should become more ok with making stuff that is not up to your own standards of taste, but how that process of making bad stuff can be helpful to getting to the point where you make better stuff.
I think it's also common to be much more self critical than other people about your work. You might have a distorted view of how happy your creative friends are about their work and overestimating how much they are enjoying making their work. In the studio where I am, about 90% of the serious about their work people are constantly critical about their own work. Outsiders also think that it must be so much fun to do the art that I make, but the reality is that I am not having fun when I make stuff, I am doing a kind of work that I am interested in and want to do because I sometimes get satisfaction from the end product. To me it's not fun in the way that hanging out with friends or going out dancing is fun.
posted by tangaroo at 4:40 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
Setting up high-stakes photoshoots sounds very stressful. How about secret, frequent, low-stakes photoshoots in your backyard? On your windowsill? It's amazing how fast you learn when there's no pressure and no-one to see you make all the mistakes in the book.
Stop comparing yourself to other people. It's pointless and never ends well.
Get stuff out on Flickr and Pinterest and Society6 and wherever. You'll be learning and getting energised whatever you do. Don't get hung up on instant stardom. If a few people find you and like your work, that's gravy.
There's a ton of self-help books about this stuff. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and dozens more. Also try reading biogs of major artists, and noticing that they went through wilderness years. Find pictures of early works of big artists and notice that their major themes and styles can be seen there, even if the execution is crap. They went through it too.
Picture yourself on your deathbed regretting that you never even tried.
posted by Grunyon at 4:54 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Stop comparing yourself to other people. It's pointless and never ends well.
Get stuff out on Flickr and Pinterest and Society6 and wherever. You'll be learning and getting energised whatever you do. Don't get hung up on instant stardom. If a few people find you and like your work, that's gravy.
There's a ton of self-help books about this stuff. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and dozens more. Also try reading biogs of major artists, and noticing that they went through wilderness years. Find pictures of early works of big artists and notice that their major themes and styles can be seen there, even if the execution is crap. They went through it too.
Picture yourself on your deathbed regretting that you never even tried.
posted by Grunyon at 4:54 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Reframe it in your miind this way: there's a saying that every great artist has 1000 bad paintings (photographs) in them. Get busy and get those out of the way, along your way to greatness.
posted by sarajane at 5:06 AM on December 1, 2015
posted by sarajane at 5:06 AM on December 1, 2015
Response by poster:
I have a shoot scheduled for this week that is as low stakes as it gets for me (ignoring that I'm spending money on studio, model, etc.): it's purely for personal work, it's just to play around and see if I can make some art... and I am shit scared about it. The model is someone I've wanted to work with for a while -- a wonderfully creative person -- and all I can think is that I'm not going to be good enough or deserving enough of their time.
Funnily enough, I do a lot of work with bands on shoots that can be very creative (because they're for album covers or whatever) and whilst I get nervous it's much more of a will-it-all-hang-together kind of a feel than this crushing self doubt. Maybe that's because I don't worry about what the band will think of me -- I already know that they'll like the images).
posted by gmb at 5:09 AM on December 1, 2015
Setting up high-stakes photoshoots sounds very stressful. How about secret, frequent, low-stakes photoshoots in your backyard?Thing is (and not to threadsit) there's a law of diminishing returns here. I need to make work that I can get out in the world, that I can show people whom I want to work with so as to convince them to work with me. I can't always do that shooting in my back yard -- indeed, I'm past the point where that works for what I'm looking to do at the moment.
I have a shoot scheduled for this week that is as low stakes as it gets for me (ignoring that I'm spending money on studio, model, etc.): it's purely for personal work, it's just to play around and see if I can make some art... and I am shit scared about it. The model is someone I've wanted to work with for a while -- a wonderfully creative person -- and all I can think is that I'm not going to be good enough or deserving enough of their time.
Funnily enough, I do a lot of work with bands on shoots that can be very creative (because they're for album covers or whatever) and whilst I get nervous it's much more of a will-it-all-hang-together kind of a feel than this crushing self doubt. Maybe that's because I don't worry about what the band will think of me -- I already know that they'll like the images).
posted by gmb at 5:09 AM on December 1, 2015
I’m a hobbyist photographer, so my experience is not going to be exactly the same as you, but about six months ago, I started shooting film, and I bought a cheap, vintage fixed-lens rangefinder. The idea was to limit my options as much as possible while shooting. The viewfinder was only an approximation of the final picture, I couldn’t chimp, and I couldn’t zoom. It forced me to be much more careful about the pictures I take, (each exposure is about 50¢ between the cost of film and processing), and my options for fixing things in post are much more limited. I had to live with the results of what I took.
The first few rolls of film were extremely frustrating for me, but I quickly got better, and the quality of my photography has improved. Now when I’m shooting digital, I’m being more contemplative about my photography, my hit-ratio has improved vastly, and I’m doing much less post-processing on my results. It’s really helped me to focus on what’s important. And I’ve only been at it a few months; I’ve still got a whole lot to learn.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:12 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
The first few rolls of film were extremely frustrating for me, but I quickly got better, and the quality of my photography has improved. Now when I’m shooting digital, I’m being more contemplative about my photography, my hit-ratio has improved vastly, and I’m doing much less post-processing on my results. It’s really helped me to focus on what’s important. And I’ve only been at it a few months; I’ve still got a whole lot to learn.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:12 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've had the same issue with art and with writing (PhD Eng. and casual painter). At least art is *fun* but writing always felt like a slog--especially in Grad School where everyone is very competitive and your successes are mistakenly conflated with how "smart" you are. Like, who wants to subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny? Anyway...
This may not work for everyone, but I find a glass of wine or smoking marijuana* to help me get over my ego... not a ton, but enough to just get me into the process. Do you find that once you're busy your anxiety begins to fall away?
*I understand that some people could be vulnerable to substance abuse or addiction, so this is cautiously given advice.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 5:24 AM on December 1, 2015
This may not work for everyone, but I find a glass of wine or smoking marijuana* to help me get over my ego... not a ton, but enough to just get me into the process. Do you find that once you're busy your anxiety begins to fall away?
*I understand that some people could be vulnerable to substance abuse or addiction, so this is cautiously given advice.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 5:24 AM on December 1, 2015
Best answer: play around and see if I can make some art... and I am shit scared about it.
First, good. Don't loose that, control/mediate perhaps but that burn in the belly, stage fright, the nervous intensity, keeps us honest, keeps us alive, keeps us going through the checklists one more time. Use it, work through it, use that deep true terror as tool, don't let it use you.
On the other hand, perhaps be a bit more specific than "play around" (play is good, freedom is good) find more focus, a specific light effect, the particular kind of shadow, a distinct goal is not the enemy of relaxed play.
posted by sammyo at 5:31 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
First, good. Don't loose that, control/mediate perhaps but that burn in the belly, stage fright, the nervous intensity, keeps us honest, keeps us alive, keeps us going through the checklists one more time. Use it, work through it, use that deep true terror as tool, don't let it use you.
On the other hand, perhaps be a bit more specific than "play around" (play is good, freedom is good) find more focus, a specific light effect, the particular kind of shadow, a distinct goal is not the enemy of relaxed play.
posted by sammyo at 5:31 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
Hey, I just looked at your site, wow just great work! Don't discount what me and the others posted but really don't worry, you have clearly mastered your craft and have control of all the elements, as much as I often detest the phrase "Just Do It"! And if you miss, well good on that too, everyone does, but you're already at a level where your misses would be the envy of many.
posted by sammyo at 5:55 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 5:55 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm in a different art. I'm a writer. Writers play out this fear cycle over a much longer time schedule -- it takes months or even years to write one measly book. There are three things I do to cope with it, which are varying degrees of effective.
First and probably least healthy, I look at the external validation I've received: works sold, respected artists who treat me as a peer, reviews, accolades and achievements. In particular, a good friend of mine once told me "nobody pays you money only because they like you." You've already hit a certain level of success. That doesn't happen by accident.
Second, I externalize the fear. It's not necessarily anything to do with me, it's just a thing that's going on right now. (Or for the more urgent kind of anxiety, "this is just a thing my body is doing right now.") It's as remote and uncontrollable as the weather, and it doesn't mean deep in your soul you have to feel any particular way about your actual work or your worth as an artist. Since this fear-reaction is predictable, it becomes easier over time to recognize it and set it aside.
Third, and this is part and parcel with channeling that nervous energy into your work: recognize that this feeling is a sign that you're growing and striving as a creator. You're trying things maybe you haven't done before. You're risking resources, making yourself vulnerable. Reframe so that this unpleasant feeling is in fact an excellent omen. After all, if you ever cease to have it, it means you've reached a point in your career where you're solely staying in your comfort zone or rehashing only the things you already know work for you. And that's not what you want, is it?
posted by Andrhia at 6:10 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
First and probably least healthy, I look at the external validation I've received: works sold, respected artists who treat me as a peer, reviews, accolades and achievements. In particular, a good friend of mine once told me "nobody pays you money only because they like you." You've already hit a certain level of success. That doesn't happen by accident.
Second, I externalize the fear. It's not necessarily anything to do with me, it's just a thing that's going on right now. (Or for the more urgent kind of anxiety, "this is just a thing my body is doing right now.") It's as remote and uncontrollable as the weather, and it doesn't mean deep in your soul you have to feel any particular way about your actual work or your worth as an artist. Since this fear-reaction is predictable, it becomes easier over time to recognize it and set it aside.
Third, and this is part and parcel with channeling that nervous energy into your work: recognize that this feeling is a sign that you're growing and striving as a creator. You're trying things maybe you haven't done before. You're risking resources, making yourself vulnerable. Reframe so that this unpleasant feeling is in fact an excellent omen. After all, if you ever cease to have it, it means you've reached a point in your career where you're solely staying in your comfort zone or rehashing only the things you already know work for you. And that's not what you want, is it?
posted by Andrhia at 6:10 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm an illustrator, not a photographer, so I'm not sure how helpful my advice might be... I still relate so much with this issue too. That said, I find when I'm in a slump, crippled by unrelenting self criticism over my art, that drawing something silly/comedic (that I can still share with the world) seems to bring back my motivation to do something that's more detailed and requires more effort. Instead of making people chuckle, I want to 'wow' them, and that makes me want to do, and share, more.
Like sammyo, I also took a look at some of your stuff and was really impressed. Beautiful work.
posted by stubbehtail at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Like sammyo, I also took a look at some of your stuff and was really impressed. Beautiful work.
posted by stubbehtail at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I need to make work that I can get out in the world, that I can show people whom I want to work with so as to convince them to work with me...I start worrying about not being good enough to work with the talent that I've booked for the shoot, then I see the work of my friends, then I know them all to be phenomenal successes and I a worthless failure...I can mostly cope with those by just acknowledging them and then moving on, but I'd really rather be able to do what my creative friends seem to do...
I see what you're talking about on a practical level, but at the same time, for me, putting this much weight on external validation is creative death. The moment I shook off my decade-long writer's block was the moment I realized, deep in my gut, that I cared more about my writing than anyone else in the world ever would. The natural state of the universe to your art is pure indifference, with a little bit of kneejerk hostility mixed in. Don't fight that. Embrace it. That art is yours. You need to love it, flawed as it is, more than you love the approval of anyone else on the planet. Making art in the hopes of gaining social validation is like whoring out your soulmate. Don't instrumentalize your artistic talent; don't make it a means to some other end. Think of it as a kind of faith, something you love without hope of return.
On a somewhat less high-flown level, I think that your art, right now, is probably way too wrapped up in your social identity. You're surrounded by artists you admire and you want to Be An Artist more than you actually want to make art. The voices of other people are way too loud in your brain. What you should probably do is pull a Bon Iver and disappear into the woods for a while, but since it sounds like you're not ready to do that yet, I have a potential assignment for you.
At every photoshoot, take one picture that you swear to yourself you'll never show anybody. It is only for you. Whenever the voices get loud in your head, think about that picture - what it will look like, what will be beautiful about it, how it will feel to take it out of the drawer and look at it and feel the freedom of never having to know what anyone else thinks of it. Protect it from the shallow judgment of other people. And shield it from your own judgment, too. Protect it from yourself, those mean voices that are just as chittering and pointless as the voices of other people. Try letting it exist apart from whether it's good or bad. Practice loving it like you'd love a child - not because it's perfect, but because it came from you.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 7:15 AM on December 1, 2015 [13 favorites]
I see what you're talking about on a practical level, but at the same time, for me, putting this much weight on external validation is creative death. The moment I shook off my decade-long writer's block was the moment I realized, deep in my gut, that I cared more about my writing than anyone else in the world ever would. The natural state of the universe to your art is pure indifference, with a little bit of kneejerk hostility mixed in. Don't fight that. Embrace it. That art is yours. You need to love it, flawed as it is, more than you love the approval of anyone else on the planet. Making art in the hopes of gaining social validation is like whoring out your soulmate. Don't instrumentalize your artistic talent; don't make it a means to some other end. Think of it as a kind of faith, something you love without hope of return.
On a somewhat less high-flown level, I think that your art, right now, is probably way too wrapped up in your social identity. You're surrounded by artists you admire and you want to Be An Artist more than you actually want to make art. The voices of other people are way too loud in your brain. What you should probably do is pull a Bon Iver and disappear into the woods for a while, but since it sounds like you're not ready to do that yet, I have a potential assignment for you.
At every photoshoot, take one picture that you swear to yourself you'll never show anybody. It is only for you. Whenever the voices get loud in your head, think about that picture - what it will look like, what will be beautiful about it, how it will feel to take it out of the drawer and look at it and feel the freedom of never having to know what anyone else thinks of it. Protect it from the shallow judgment of other people. And shield it from your own judgment, too. Protect it from yourself, those mean voices that are just as chittering and pointless as the voices of other people. Try letting it exist apart from whether it's good or bad. Practice loving it like you'd love a child - not because it's perfect, but because it came from you.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 7:15 AM on December 1, 2015 [13 favorites]
Honestly? I didn't start regularly making art I was proud of-- and that actually got finished-- until I medicated my anxiety and ADHD. The anxiety was convincing me I wasn't any good, and the ADHD made it too hard to maintain focus to finish anything. It sounds like you've got some of the same kind of anxiety I did, and if that's the case you can't fix it by making better art-- you have to fix the anxiety so you stop feeling shitty about the great art you're already making.
posted by nonasuch at 7:43 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by nonasuch at 7:43 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would definitely suggest you read Art and Fear, and perhaps some of his other books on photography.
posted by Candleman at 8:45 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 8:45 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
I got a lot out of the book Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, which talks about these exact issues. It reframed a lot for me about sitting down to do the work over and over, what imperfections actually bring to your work, and getting through issues of procrastination and self-doubt.
posted by cadge at 8:49 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by cadge at 8:49 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sometimes I start a project where the goal is to make the work as bad as I possibly can. I don't always finish those projects. But if I'm sincere in my quest for terrible (i.e., move beyond merely imitating something I think is terrible), they reliably remind me of what fun is.
posted by gnomeloaf at 10:46 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by gnomeloaf at 10:46 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I got over my perfectionism by working under a notorious perfectionist, and ultimately watching major project collapse under the weight of his obsessive need to control every detail.
Now I have a finely developed sense of "fuck it, it's good enough, I made a couple mistakes but I'll try to not make them again next time". There are a lot of pages in the graphic novel I spent four years on where I had that attitude when I finished them, there are also pages where I pulled out all the stops and went crazy with details because that's what the story needed at that point.
It may also help to experiment with deliberately fucking things up. Make projects where you don't have time to be a perfectionist and where you have to let a bunch of things go. Sometimes it'll work fabulously despite that. Sometimes it'll fail horribly. In the latter case, you just found a thing that you actually should worry about in the future.
Also, consider recreational chemistry. Make your own choices based on the legality of various substances where you live; I live in Seattle so I have a huge array of different strains of weed available and can pick and choose ones that help me take the edge of fear and hate off of my brain, but alcohol is a long-time favorite of creative types too, and there are many different kinds to pick from. Other kinds of psychoactive chemicals may help as well. Anti-anxiety drugs maybe?
And... stop comparing your work to others. When I worked under that perfectionist, I was surrounded by master animators who'd been plying their craft for years, and constantly compared my journeyman work to theirs. Then one of them brought in some drawings from his teen years. And they were exactly as shitty as my drawings from my teen years. But they were also older than me. It was like a switch flipped in my head: of course he could draw rings around me, he'd been drawing regularly longer than I'd been alive. I could look at my work and realize it was better than 90% of the people out there, it just wasn't up to the skills of a master of the same craft who'd been at a pro level when I was like ten. He started from the same place I did. And ever since then I've looked at work from people who are better than me at something without envy; I know that if I really really want to be able to do that, I just have to work on trying it for a few years.
posted by egypturnash at 11:01 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
Now I have a finely developed sense of "fuck it, it's good enough, I made a couple mistakes but I'll try to not make them again next time". There are a lot of pages in the graphic novel I spent four years on where I had that attitude when I finished them, there are also pages where I pulled out all the stops and went crazy with details because that's what the story needed at that point.
It may also help to experiment with deliberately fucking things up. Make projects where you don't have time to be a perfectionist and where you have to let a bunch of things go. Sometimes it'll work fabulously despite that. Sometimes it'll fail horribly. In the latter case, you just found a thing that you actually should worry about in the future.
Also, consider recreational chemistry. Make your own choices based on the legality of various substances where you live; I live in Seattle so I have a huge array of different strains of weed available and can pick and choose ones that help me take the edge of fear and hate off of my brain, but alcohol is a long-time favorite of creative types too, and there are many different kinds to pick from. Other kinds of psychoactive chemicals may help as well. Anti-anxiety drugs maybe?
And... stop comparing your work to others. When I worked under that perfectionist, I was surrounded by master animators who'd been plying their craft for years, and constantly compared my journeyman work to theirs. Then one of them brought in some drawings from his teen years. And they were exactly as shitty as my drawings from my teen years. But they were also older than me. It was like a switch flipped in my head: of course he could draw rings around me, he'd been drawing regularly longer than I'd been alive. I could look at my work and realize it was better than 90% of the people out there, it just wasn't up to the skills of a master of the same craft who'd been at a pro level when I was like ten. He started from the same place I did. And ever since then I've looked at work from people who are better than me at something without envy; I know that if I really really want to be able to do that, I just have to work on trying it for a few years.
posted by egypturnash at 11:01 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Because I thought it might help future readers of this question — including myself — I just wanted to link to what I made at the shoot I talked about above.
The full gallery (NSFW) is linked in my profile.
I'm proud of it, and I'm glad I tried, and I thank you all for your help.
posted by gmb at 2:42 PM on December 14, 2015
The full gallery (NSFW) is linked in my profile.
I'm proud of it, and I'm glad I tried, and I thank you all for your help.
posted by gmb at 2:42 PM on December 14, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
Open up an Etsy store, crank up a second website, do something, do anything that turns off your monkey mind and turns on your creative juices.
As an aside, I would HIGHLY recommend learning how to meditate.
Just because you think something doesn't make it true, and meditation helps you realize this.
Make sure that you are taking care of you when it comes to sleep, to diet, to exercise, to hydration.
Don't buy into the tortured artist myth, and certainly don't buy into the drunk or stoned or wasted artist myth.
"90% perfect and shared with the world always changes more lives than 100% perfect and stuck in your head."
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 3:28 AM on December 1, 2015 [8 favorites]