What to do when you’re procrastinating?
Start by making it ugly.
Imposter syndrom
Impostor syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or impostorism, is a psychological occurrence in which people doubt their skills, talents, or accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as frauds.
Boy, have I had some imposter syndrome going on about making videos.
It happens every year, once or twice. Is what I’m doing good enough, is it worth anything? Most of the time it’s about my paintings, but this time sneaky little imposter pried itself into my videos and it made me doubt.. everything? I just came to a full stop.
I had a big burst of growth on some of my videos last year (50K views anyone?) and a bunch of new people started subscribing. I’m almost surpassing my instagram ‘followers' and I worked years on that. Somehow I felt I had to be... better. Because of numbers.
If you’ve never edited a video before (makes sense) trust me when I tell you that it takes a lot of time. I’m not talking about filming, that’s a different story, I’m talking about sitting in front of a computer, staring at yourself, listening to your own voice (in my case) and looking at the puzzle that you made for yourself. Prying away, finding the story. Of course you could just put all the frames after the other, but 99% of the time that wouldn’t be very interesting.
Screenshot taken from the video shown above, I worked on a lot of paintings.
And I had loads, loads of footage. I think I was getting tired in december because some of it didn’t even have audio, and I found out while sitting in front of my computer more than 2 months later.
Not using anything wasn’t an option because I can’t just go and refilm the start of a painting. That’d be pretty dumb and also I have a life. So I approached it in a way I approach my sketches and my paintings sometimes.
I had to make something ugly.
Because if the first page of a sketchbook is ugly, who cares if the rest turns out ugly? If the paper isn’t this gorgeous maiden white anymore, who cares what you paint on top of it? Well, if I had this shitty video with a shitty voiceover, who cares what comes next? It can only become better right?
Now, it didn’t turn out like a monster of a video, it turned out OK. There’s some basic skill there, but I could’ve definitely done better. However, I feel a ton lighter now that it’s out and I can start fresh! Most of the time that imposter syndrome is just a load of work that’s following you that keeps getting bigger and more intimidating the more you’re hiding from it. Even though (almost) all my work is self-initiated, I feel like I have to do certain things - and finish those things.
I received some super sweet comments about not making things a chore and being ‘enough’ which I appreciate a lot (thank you internet friends!) and now I’m sharing this with you. Maybe there’s something you’re procrastinating about.
Go make it ugly!
