After filming, rough editing and writing a script, I never ended up posting the video (or script!) I intended to make before this one.
It was a story about mindful habits that make a difference for your happiness and productivity, but something wasn’t quite resonating within me.
The truth is, I feel rather lonely and lost right now, and by lost I mean I think I have lost some of my self love. A lot of this has been stemming from my creativity, which is kind of what this video is going to be about.
Anywho, it felt unauthentic to post a video about these “habits” I claim are allowing me to live softly and ease-fully when in reality, it’s been feeling a bit like I’m fighting an internal battle.
Despite all this there is one thing I am confident about. Nature has been calling my name, and I’m finally listening. If it’s hard to find the love within right now, I feel like the best first step is to seek it where it is so obviously calling from.
The Final Draft of My Diary
I suppose my actual journal is my diary. But Youtube is the final draft of my diary. These videos are what I’ve polished from my messy insights and experiences to make sense of the world. It’s the wisdom that makes me feel better about life, and those are the pieces of my journey that I want to share with others. That “final draft” is what art is really defined by in my eyes. I don’t see my journal as art because it doesn’t really say anything meaningful about life or make sense of anything. But when I organize my insights, reflections and experiences in the form of something— in this case a video— it suddenly creates a story. Even if no one were to watch this, the effort I have put into creating this gives a voice to something within myself that I need to process. That, in my opinion, is the most powerful form of creation: the kind that sheds light on the aspects of ourselves that need to be touched.
However, although I find so much meaning and creative fulfillment making these videos, the perfectionist within in can’t help but just want to sometimes give up. Why? Because I don’t feel like I’m good enough, duh.
I think there is an expectation that we are supposed to be naturally good at the things that we love. But the truth is, there is a lot I love, creating these videos being towards the top of the list, and I suck at a lot of it.
It becomes even more frustrating too because when I’m not as good as I want to be at the thing I love to do, I resent myself a little for it. Because I love and care about this form of creation so much, I really really want to be good. When I don’t meet my own expectations, I feel like a failure. All of a sudden, the thing that I loved creating is something I’m hating.
This is the darker side of creativity— the perfectionist trying to take control and define a project’s “worthiness.” Many times I can’t even tell when I’m creating from a place of genuine expression versus creating something to appeal to my inner perfectionist: the part within each of us that never seems to be pleased.
Visible Art is Good Art
I think that the next piece to understand about this duality that comes with creating art is that visible art, that is, the art we see and engage with, is mostly good art. Excellent art that is. There is so much media and art to consume that of course whatever gets public attention is going to be the content we consume the most of. Objectively speaking, good art performs better.
For me, this is where the “imposter-syndrome” kicks in. I don’t feel worthy of creating videos because I’m not as good as my favorite creators. Imposter syndrome is something I think we all experience at certain points in our lives, but I feel like I just don’t hear it being talked about enough when it comes to our creative pursuits. I mean, it’s creativity: we are literally supposed to be doing the opposite of self comparison when we are being creative, but it feels almost impossible in this day and age.
All of this feels to me like there isn’t space for mediocrity in the world of artistic creation. Well, there is, but no one talks about it. Because who is going to talk about mediocre art?
Ok, so then how do we, or in less of a generalization, “I,” start loving the process of creating my mediocre art. My mediocre essays, my mediocre videos, my mediocre blog posts? How are we able to separate ourselves from the pressure to be exceptional at the thing we love, and instead just love to create?
Finding the Value Outside of the Public Eye
A big question I had to ask myself on this trip was “if there wasn’t another person on this planet to share my creations with, would I still create?” And if so, “Why would I create?”
My first answer was an apparent yes. Creating is something that brings meaning into my life. Like I said, these “final draft diary entries,” are my organized insights that speak to something I need to take a closer look at in my life. They are my proof that I have successfully implemented critical takeaways from experiences. Creating gives meaning to life more than just living it— creation is the process of saying something about how you’ve lived. Creation allows you to define your own experiences as you wish to do so. Both consuming and creating art is the vessel in which we perceive life.
All of those reasons to create art listed above are completely intrinsic, and this is what I’ve been reminding myself of when I create my mediocre content. It’s ok to create mediocrity because it’s the value it holds for yourself that really matters. If that strikes a chord of empathy in someone else than all the more power to you, but art only really needs to impact one person: You.
