Doubt and Drive

Earlier in April an artist that I follow posted a message about the creative process, dealing with feelings of doubt, and the overwhelming drive to create art on his Facebook profile. I was surprised to read through it and realize that every word of his post mirrored my own thoughts and experiences.

 In hindsight, I realize that I shouldn’t have been so shocked. I’ve read and studied a lot of art and literary history both during my time at Weber as well as after graduation. I know that doubt and this unyielding urge to produce art are common within the creative community. Despite loving and learning much from these studies, it seems that this was a lesson that I missed entirely. Prior to this post I had felt that once an artist got past a certain threshold they were endowed with confidence in their skill set and would magically be able to avoid doubt and uncertainty when it came to making art. Needless to say, this isn’t the case.

 I was impressed to read his honest and raw post that was able to perfectly capture my feelings about the process of creation. It gave me a lot of clarity being reminded that I wasn’t alone in this experience. It also served as a reminder to push through the doubt and anxiety that plagues and limits too many artists and to allow my “hunger,” “passion,” “addiction,” to thrive and guide me.

  Below is the original post from David Powell. I would advise that you ignore the warning and read through this post. It may be long post but it is well worth the read. I would also strongly encourage you to view his work at www.powellarts.com and to follow him on Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/powellartsworkshop.

 Warning: this post is probably a waste of your time. Public brain dump. Don’t read it if you’re in a hurry and looking for important highlights of your friend’s lives. This isn’t important, just something I’m feeling a lot of lately and feel like farting it  onto the internet. You’ve been warned.

 Today I am face to face with the admonition to practice what I preach when it comes to working creatively. I often do my best to encourage people out of fear and into action when it comes to creativity. Often times the difference between someone who is an artist and someone who isn’t, is that the artist just went ahead and did it. Didn’t ask for permission or instructions, just found a way by digging in and trying and failing and learning from failure and trying again. What looks like magic to most people is usually just the result of a lot of mess ups, and not giving up when the inclination comes to do so. A lot of people have the mistaken notion that artists are lucky and they have it easy because they get to do fun things that they love instead of real work. Artists are lucky, its true, but not because they were born with some huge advantage that they don’t have to work for, rendering them perfectly positioned to have a carefree creative life. Artists are lucky because they don’t allow the devastating feeling of failure to stop them. Perhaps they were given room to fail when they were young, or they failed so much that people gave up on them, and that gave them room to breathe and build their own path, and that is lucky. Perhaps they were more encouraged in their creative endeavors and were lucky enough to have someone give them honest, even harsh but helpful criticism. But make no mistake, art is a lonely world of self doubt, overwhelming numbers of choices, none of which are ever verifiable as right or wrong, hard work, expensive failures, and even sometimes dangerous risks. Being an artist is not something people do instead of real work. It is frightening and unsure and it comes with a great deal of sacrifice and self devaluation and pain. So then how do you encourage someone to do it? Well first off you can’t convince anyone. Of anything. Not really. And usually if someone wants to be involved in the creative world, you won’t be able to stop them. Despite all of the self loathing and doubt and confusion and pain, some people are simply compelled to continue. I think that speaks back to my definition of an artist. Someone who just does. I don’t do art because I love every minute of it. I don’t do art because I get lots of praise when I make something pretty, although I enjoy that aspect of it. When it comes down to it, I do art because I can’t stop. If I’m not making something or trying something new or thinking on paper or with tools in three dimensional space, I get anxious and restless and fidgety. I’m a mess when I’m cooped up and unable to jump into an idea I just had or start learning a new process or expressing an idea in a way I haven’t thought of before. Even if its simply wanting to do something I’ve seen someone else do, I’m not an okay or sane human without art.

 Now comes to the overwhelming feeling I’m fighting in my own head this week. This is the feeling I’m constantly trying to help my students and other people combat as they work to improve. It is the feeling of overwhelm. I feel today like a very tiny fish in an enormous ocean. I feel like there is such a vast expanse of knowledge I have yet to attain, and the time that it will take to attain it seems so insurmountably long, and by the time I learn it I feel like it will be obsolete anyway, and the creative world is barreling on at such an incredible pace that I’ll never be able to keep up. The things I want to be involved in and the things I want to be a part of are so far beyond my meager skill level and untried and untested work ethic, that the little voice creeps back in to just pick something else. Give up and don’t bother trying to work in the industry cause you’ll hate it anyway and it will take too long to even get to a basic level and everyone is already light years ahead and doing things better than you ever could, just give up and do this as a hobby instead and pick another career.

 And the worst part about that creepy little negative voice, is that it’s right. The logic is sound, and it is right. To learn all of the materials I need to know about to even be noticeable in the competitive world class film industry, will take such a gargantuan investment of time and resources, and even getting to that point doesn’t even touch on the knowledge of software and tools and principles I need to learn in order to be as effective as I need to be, and to make the right friends in the right places who can introduce me to the people who can use and pay for my skills without being slimy and weird about it, to learn how to work without sleep and against hard deadlines, and to have technical knowledge and skill, but then also an ever blossoming fountain of creative ideas on demand, and keeping it all organized and in order of priority so as to be as effective as possible on my path…. it all just heaps onto my anxious mind and drags me down into my scared, procrastinating, sad little self.

 And after I have that happen, and write about it on Facebook, and my mind has a chance to be quiet and to think and brain dump onto the internet, I can hear, like a deep heartbeat, soft and steady, the need to keep going. Like a low constant drum beat, down in my guts, I feel the addiction, almost a masochistic sickness, to keep trying to make it work. It isn’t a happy, bright and bubbly positive tune of “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can”, but rather a sickening push, being tugged in one direction despite little tangents and divergences and distractions. Like being pulled slowly through the water, by a hook. I can’t stop. It’s not even a choice anymore. My path was set some time in my past, I’m not exactly sure when, but I’m far beyond the point of no return now. It won’t let me stop. This beautiful and terrible thing called “trying to make my passion my career” just won’t let me go, even if I wanted it to. It’s not positivity and can-do-it-ness that brings me out of these overwhelming depressions of questioning how on earth I’m going to make this work. It’s the need. The itch. The hunger. The quiet, boom… boom… boom of that heartbeat, the hook on the line, the pull, the need to do this, to try it, to see if I can. It sounds so narcissistic and nauseatingly self serving. Maybe it is. Maybe I’ll completely fail and ruin everything. Maybe nothing I want to happen will happen, or it will and I’ll find out I hate it. Maybe I’ll never be good enough to do what I think I want to do. Maybe that little voice will always be right. But I can’t do anything else. The element of choice in this equation no longer computes.

 Well that’s my ridiculous and sincere and depressing and unimportant rant for today. You were warned.