Doing Something New

I'm on the wrong side of the learning curve of a project I'm working on right now and completely consumed by self-doubt. I'm so, so, terrified of putting something out into the world that's so far away from my comfort zone.

Rohan says that a little bit of self-doubt is good, but not too much. As if anyone can calibrate feelings so well and dial it up or down seamlessly.

But I know that people do get better at it. Because anyone I know who has made anything worthwhile has gotten better at it. Because all the trillion books I've read about writing talk about it. They also say (usually in more elegant words) that managing the fear of being crap is essential to any degree of continued artistic success. Too little and you get cocky, too much and you never make anything.

( FYI I belong squarely in latter group)

Rohan was watching Kanan Gill's latest during lunch and I was there for a bit. He talks about art rated "time-pass". How was the movie? Timespass. Book? Timepass. It's a funny bit, but at the center of this is the deep, deep sadness and fear that somebody is going to see what you worked on for twelve months, what you braved all kinds of anxiety (and people remarking that you've put on weight) to put out in the world (granted there's money involved also) and then hear that it was time-pass. Not worth my time but the inertia kept me there. Indifferent either way.

I think that bit described my deep, deep pathos with putting something out into the world. What if the world is indifferent. What if my work is futile. What if I'm useless.

I also felt bad that he had to explain his weight-gain in his work. What a shitty world we live in where he feels the need to do that.


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