this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Creative

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Do you ever feel like art "art" is not your thing? [Question/Rant I guess] (feddit.it)
submitted 1 year ago by pieceofcrazy@feddit.it to c/creative@beehaw.org
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I do, most of the time. I've always felt creative, I always have thousands of ideas and concepts for anything, be it a drawing, a song or a text of any kind, but regardless of what it is, anytime I sit down and try to make something I hate it, I hate it so deeply it disgusts me and kills any will to continue whatever it is I'm doing.

I tried to write some lyrics some days ago, it felt okay-ish until I wnt back and read it, at which point it feelt as if I was seeing someone else in the mirror: all the things, the ideas, the feelings I thought I put in it just aren't there. It feels hollow, alien, repulsive.

I know I can't be good as a beginner, but I've been a beginner in everything since I was a kid. And I kept trying and trying and trying, and every time I felt that feeling of disgust and repulsion, outrage even. I just can't stand it anymore, and maybe "art", or rather artistic self-expression, isn't my thing? Maybe I keep trying to open a door that simply isn't the one I'm supposed to open?

Did you ever feel this way and overcame it? I don't even care about making whatever I make public, I just want to feel as if I gave shape to something I thought or felt.

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[โ€“] smart_boy@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's very common to feel this way about your own work. Your eye is trained in both a broad sense and in the context of your own work, consequently you see a thousand flaws that a layman couldn't even consider and even an outside expert would likely shrug off. Ira Glass called this "the gap".

The way to move forward is both make the process as enjoyable as possible and also discipline yourself into doing it regularly enough to improve and flourish. I wish you luck.

[โ€“] surrendertogravity@wayfarershaven.eu 1 points 1 year ago

This is going to sound insane but thank you so much for this comment!! I've had the concept of "the gap" in my head since 2012 thanks to Gavin Aung Than's comic strip version of Ira's quote, but somewhere along the line I completely forgot the source of both the quote and the comic and had never been able to rediscover it until you mentioned it here.