I'm just
posting a very loose english translation of what I wrote here,
So, move
along. the internet is vast. Watch this video about the birds of paradise mating
dance instead. come back in a few days when I write something new.
To the rest,
here it goes:
SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR VERY SELF-CRITICAL PEOPLE
If you’re a struggling artist with internet
connection, there’s a big chance you’ll spent a considerable amount of time
browsing behance portfolios and feeling lame and unoriginal.
During my time in university I learned some tricks to
avoid the self-commiserating spiral of oh-god-there’s-so-many-talented-people-in-the-world-why-do-I-even-try.
This is a list of the things I try to focus on, to snap out of work-driven
ansiety.
Consider this a life coaching moment
for underachievers:
1- There will ALWAYS be someone
better than you.
When my friend Sofia told her
parents she wanted to study arts, her mum said “you know you’ll never be the
best, don’t you?”. It might sound harsh, but I think it’s a good motto. Unless
you’re Michael Phelps, there will always be someone faster, richer, more
handsome than you. So you might just well accept it, roll up your sleeves and
do your best anyway.
2- Even Michael Phelps gets nervous.
Once I started going to art-related
events and festivals, and met people out of art school I became more aware
that even those that I consider super talented and sucessful had their
moments of visible nervousness and perspiration.
I’m aware this is a little
despicable, but thinking that the people I admire also get insecure and doubt
themselves from time to time makes me very glad.
3- More to learn!
When I went to university, I found
myself surrounded by people that knew a lot more about design than me. They
mastered the software, talked about typefaces and had little inside jokes about
Josef Muller Brockmann! Eventually, I made a conscient choice to avoid
thinking about how little I knew and rather how much I could learn from them.
Now that I’m not in school, there’s
a bigger physical distance between me and the people with shiny behance
portfolios. They’re not sitting next to me in the school canteen anymore.
But I also learned that artists outside the academic
world are generally nice and enjoy talking about themselves and their work. My
advise is: Don’t just look at other people’s portfolios online. Read their
blogs, go to exhibitions, sign up for workshops, ask them stuff, pick their
brains, try to find out about their process and inspirations. It’s easy to look
at a finished piece of work and think “gaaah... this is genius I’ll never do
that” and overlook the fact that it developed out of a lot of failure and
experimentation. That piece is the good-looking tip of a huge iceberg of hard
work.
4- There’s worst.
I used to entertain myself browsing
bad illustration portfolios when I was feeling down. It was a guilty pleasure
that I only admitted to a few close friends because I feared it was a bit
pathetic to cheer myself up with other people’s lack of talent.
With time, I discovered everyone
else does it! (that, or I’m only friends with terrible people) Although I wouldnt
advise you to linger too much on this type of comparisions. This are not the
healthiest of thoughts and eventually one of the people you think you’re better
than will get the job/award/exhibition/visibility you craved for and you’ll
feel like the world is unfair, have a rage attack and rip to shreds the latest Time
Out issue, because they published a new article about that person’s awfull
work.
5-Call your biggest fan.

You have merit! You’ve done some interesting stuff! And if self-compliments don’t work call your mum and ask her to remind you the talented miracle kid you are. Have her tell you how everything you do is beautiful from the pasta collages in kindergarden, to the editorial works from now..
6- You will fail. You will survive.
I used to get so ansious about school my stomach would
start to burn. Watching Teleshopping at 4am waiting for the painkillers to kick
in is the opposite of a happy life.
To avoid that, now I focus on how all the things that
make me worry: deadlines, driving exams, failed relationships, job
interviews... are small in the vast universe that is my existence.
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VISUALIZING MYSELF AS A GIANT HELPS
|
That’s how I flunked Printing Technologies on my third
year. It was the day before the deadline. I had enough time to do the report,
but would probably pass with a low grade, sleep very little and stress a lot.
So, I sang a karaoke version of Eye of the Tiger on
Youtube, made up my mind and said to myself: nope, this is not worth the
effort. I deserve to be happy. and BAM! I flunked something for the first time
in my life!
Newsflash: Nothing bad happened.
Nobody died. The world didn’t implode because of my
failure.
If whatever you’re doing makes you way more miserable
and ansious than it should, being well is more important. And it’s not a big
deal to give up.
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