It is very frustrating to be unable to create what your insides want you to create.
I’m very good with words. I’m passable with drawing. I’m bearable with web design. I was good enough at photography to get both a scholarship and a professional job for it (although the linked stuff is nothing but snapshots and I don’t consider it to be Real Photography).
So why does it make my chest hurt with frustration when I look at Powazek.com or NoahGrey.com or JimFormation? (And why are virtually all the sites I admire designed by men?) Maybe it’s not the design. Maybe it’s the content. Maybe they’re doing something I want to be doing. Maybe this is related to the Web Design Weight Loss Plan. Maybe my tiny little brain thinks that if I could come up with the Perfect Design, I would suddenly have the content and projects and photographs that I envy at other sites.
Well, okay, I’m not lacking in content. It’s the projects (Fray, SF Stories, Photo.net). And the photographs. These are people I want to be like (even if Trip thinks the Fray is pretentious. He’s probably right. I’m not sure that’s the point, though. I think the point is that one way or another I find these sorts of people to be inspiring, but then I flail uselessly and fail to be inspired in any sort of *useful* direction).
I dunno. Maybe I need to work more extensively on On Your Left, which is currently malingering, as is every OTHER thing I should be working on. Including my novel.
In other words, get my head out of my ass and actively work on my stuff instead of making a lot of excuses. *wry look*
I think this has something to do with my urge to Do Something. It must be a 30-inspired thing. Granted, you’re not getting there as quickly as I am, but *something* has to inspire it, right?
‘course, we have Legion! No, not a personal project, but that counts, right?
Write more novel! Frantic fans demand it. :)
I love your perfectionism, but if this keeps up it will be your downfall. I have the same problem (amongst others that affect my writing – like not actually making time to do it) so I offer the sage advice of my friend Christy when I was writing my thesis: “Your half assed job is someone elses full-assed job.”
This should go for all your stuff, Cat. I’ve read it. I’ve seen it (with the exception of the photography. Bad Tracie.) And – please name one artist who isn’t terribly arrogant who thinks his/her works are up to their own expectations.
I kinda know how you feel; when I was home last October and my dad had to burn off one of the fields, I took a whole bunch of pictures of the raging fire, and a lot of them turned out pretty well. I’m not sure when I’d felt quite so alive, crouching in the back of the pickup truck (since my mom wouldn’t let me be on foot, there was a wind), snapping away, and I suddenly wanted to be a photographer in a wild dangerous place. I’m entirely amateur, but I’m awfully proud of some of the shots I’ve gotten, and would love to take some photography classes when I get back to school.
And I’m only 25, and I want to Do Something. I think that’s where the interest in finishing my degree comes from, or something. Reading is great, and I love the heft of my booklist, but it’s just not Something, and that’s the closest I’ve got at the moment.