DMSI 3.2 it's official

[Shannon]

Working on some music today. Really pushed myself and now I'm kind of burnt out. It occurred to me that the reason I get burnt out is I'm literally fighting to overcome that voice that says everything I make is shit while simulatenously engaging in focusing on writing stuff. I kind of just want to get to the point where the simple act of creating brings enjoyment and I don't have all this anxiety and insecurity over my work being "good enough".

I think I am getting there. I've noticed these past few weeks my perfectionism has gone down a lot. I'm willing to just dive right in and work on stuff and if it doesn't come out super great it's ok. It's better than not finishing anything at all and constantly dreaming of the day when my stuff reaches my standards. I notice my internal dialogue saying stuff like "it doesn't have to be perfect, just write, create, and you'll get there". Unfortunately during the actual act of making music it feels like I'm being pulled from two different sides. One side wants to keep on going and the other side wants to get up and never touch music again. These two butt heads while i'm working and makes the process exhausting.

That's the biggest hurdle dealing with perfectionism. High standards and an ideal vision that's very very far off and usually requires hours and hours of work and skill building. But the reality of not being there can be almost painful to the point where I just avoid it. This doesn't just pertain to music. It's a mindset, which means my lack of execution of DMSI might be caused by some part of me being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work I might have to put in to achieve what I want.

When I was younger, I was also a perfectionist. I would start writing a story and never finish it because I would get distracted editing it before I was done. Or I would start doing some photography and get obsessed with making the subject perfect, getting the perfect pose, the perfect lighting, angle, time of day, nothing was ever good enough.

Then one year I did NaNoWriMo. And that taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my entire life.

Creating isn't done all at once. You don't create something perfect the first time. You create and then refine until it achieves your goals.

Writers are by definition people who write. So these guys who want to "be a writer" or "be an author" or "be a novelist" just for the sake of being able to impress someone with the title are usually people who also never get there because they're terrified that they're really not good enough, because they've put these titles on a pedestal and constantly compare themselves to some ideal. They don't write. They fidget, fiddle, futz around, plan, prepare and generally do everything else.

I used to do that too.

Now when I want to write something, I just sit down and dump my brain. Then I start working on adding things I missed, revising, editing, formatting, etc. One step at a time.

It doesn't matter if your creation comes out of you perfect or not; nobody I have ever met just sat down one day and composed a written work or a piece of music or a painting or sculpture or anything else in one try. With writing, you create a rough draft, and then you progressively refine it into a worthy work. With music, it's the same thing. And with painting, and with sculpture, and with anything else that is creative as well. That's why people practice their art, too.

And I discovered this "secret" because one day I was sitting at my desk and I happened to look at my quote of the day calendar, and it said...

"No man ever became great, except through many and great mistakes. - William E. Gladstone"

That was the most valuable advice I had ever been given up to that time. It's okay to be less than perfect, as long as you keep trying, because failure is impossible while you are still trying.

And understanding that completely killed my creation anxiety. My first drafts on books are horrible, and I'll be the first to say so. Grammatical errors, spelling errors, punctuation nightmares, subject disagreement, verb disagreement, tense disagreement... I sometimes write it and then think, "Who the hell wrote that shit? This is awful!" But it's okay, because it's just a rough draft, a quick and dirty brain dump. Maybe trying to keep my typing going at the same rate as my thoughts does that, I don't know. What I do know is...

I can correct it, improve it, refine it, polish it. And I always do.

Perfectionism without this sort of understanding is a waste of energy. Accept that you are a normal person (i.e., imperfect) and just work on being the best you can be and refining what needs refinement. Then refine it until it is as close to perfect as you can get it.