07-11-2019, 02:55 PM
Feels like last night I was clawing through a lot of fear. Woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night feeling distressed.
I realized today thinking about my whole mentality around making music, I do a lot of stuff out of fear. For a while now I've been trying to get better. My sole motivation seemed to be the fear of not being good enough or having my music be mediocre in some way. But I held onto that fear. I held onto it because I was worried if I let go of that fear, would I just start trying less? Working less hard? End up making stuff that sucks because I'd be less focused on the finer details?
I guess for me I failed to separate my attention to the craft vs my obsessive need to be good at it as a way to validate myself. But I think it was less of a validation thing and more of a fear based avoidance thing. I'm so terrified of making crap, being a crap musician, never making what I want, never being satisfied with what I create. I feel like if I let go of that unrelenting standard all that will come to be. But I see now it's just a distorted way of thinking. And ultimately even if I wrote garbage or never got better I shouldn't be basing my self worth on that. Better to live without the fear and make art vs live in fear and constantly procrastinate on things.
On the other hand I shouldn't be expecting myself to write garbage. I should be positive and believe in myself. It seems I still have a habit of preparing for worst case scenarios to soften the blow of failure. But in doing so I inevitably set myself up for failure because it's what I subconsciously expect from myself. I have to break that habit too.
I realized today thinking about my whole mentality around making music, I do a lot of stuff out of fear. For a while now I've been trying to get better. My sole motivation seemed to be the fear of not being good enough or having my music be mediocre in some way. But I held onto that fear. I held onto it because I was worried if I let go of that fear, would I just start trying less? Working less hard? End up making stuff that sucks because I'd be less focused on the finer details?
I guess for me I failed to separate my attention to the craft vs my obsessive need to be good at it as a way to validate myself. But I think it was less of a validation thing and more of a fear based avoidance thing. I'm so terrified of making crap, being a crap musician, never making what I want, never being satisfied with what I create. I feel like if I let go of that unrelenting standard all that will come to be. But I see now it's just a distorted way of thinking. And ultimately even if I wrote garbage or never got better I shouldn't be basing my self worth on that. Better to live without the fear and make art vs live in fear and constantly procrastinate on things.
On the other hand I shouldn't be expecting myself to write garbage. I should be positive and believe in myself. It seems I still have a habit of preparing for worst case scenarios to soften the blow of failure. But in doing so I inevitably set myself up for failure because it's what I subconsciously expect from myself. I have to break that habit too.
INFP
