Dealing with Failure and Self Doubt as a Young Creative
- A Moment of Vulnerability -
I think we all face times of doubt in our lives. The harsh reality is that there are times when we fail. Times when we fall flat on our faces. Times when we just want to give up. It's scary. Really, truly, terrifying; not knowing just quite how to move forward. I know from my creative elders just how much failure is a part of the creative process. I recognize how failure keeps us from mediocrity, forcing us to push onward towards greatness.....
But that doesn't make dealing with failure any easier. To succeed, I can't simply forget my failures; I can't simply move on. That's just not how the creative process works. I have to look my failure directly in its awkward, ugly face and learn from it. Of course, that's ever so much easier to write than to actually, well, do. It's really quite painful to dissect exactly why I've failed an attempt at making something worthwhile, particularly when the answers aren't exactly forthcoming.
It's times like this that "build character" as Calvin's dad would say in that most insightful of comics. That comic book father might call it building character, but sometimes I call it tearing apart old wounds. Wounds that are of course to nothing else but my own ego. I'm not supposed to fail. I'm better than that. Then reality hits and I realize just how foolish of a thought it is. I'm too good to fail? Really? How much of my fear of failure stems from some notion of deserving to succeed?
Perhaps that's the real problem; that I at times fail to recognize how inevitable failure is. That as a result, I sit bewildered when I fall instead of getting up. Maybe the only difference between the remarkable people and the average people is the former group's penchant for getting up. For continuing on. For not being afraid. For not letting their egos get in the way of assessing their flaws.
Never give up. It's just few words....easy enough in delivery and very much to the point initially, but riddled with nuances along the way.