When I started this blog I said (to myself as much as anyone) that I’d record my full range of emotions and perspective about my creative work. Well, when it comes to a large-ish chunk of what I want to do in the near future, that emotion is doubt. Doubt about whether I can do it, whether I should do it, whether I am the world’s best person to do it, and whether that even matters (since it shouldn’t.)
It’s the difference between progressing steadily upward on what I already know I can do, in order to do it incrementally better (even if it doesn’t satisfy me), or jumping off the ledge that I’ve never tried before. The leap could make me look like a fool. The leap could ask so much of my time and energy to reach an acceptable quality that I will never create something worth showing to the world. But it could recreate me if I succeed.
Naturally I’m jumping.
The breakthrough came when I recognized that I could simply talk (and create work) about this anxiety, when I accepted that I’m not alone, and it’s no shame. That I can’t be the only person who is trying to learn difficult skills halfway through her life, trying to start from creative ground zero. I used to call myself “an artist without a medium,” but I think that was my way of hiding that I was reluctant to start from nothing, like I would have to. If only I’d started then! But, I’ve long been one of those people that needs to be smarter, more skilled, more creative, more outright clever. This prevented me from doing what I needed to do.
But hopefully not any more.
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