Bridging the Endless Taste Gap
Or what happens when you think "everything I make is awful."
I’ve been feeling very much like a beginner lately. Not in a fruitful “beginner’s mindset” way, where your lack of knowledge allows you to be more creative. Just in the frustrating way, where I keep looking around at what I’ve made and thinking, “nope, that is bad.” Same for the writing.
Everything seems to involve a struggle. There are very few moments of flow. Things feel disjointed. It’s like I don’t know what I am doing. It does not feel great.
What do we do when we dislike our own work? When our expectations surpass the reality of what we’re creating?
Two things come to mind.
This is often then cue to take a break, or at least a little pause. Push, push, push is not always a successful creative strategy. Push, procrastinate, pause, regroup, return is often a better approach. There’s a good reason to take a summer break!
This simply is the process. The illusion that we spend our days in magical, dreamy flow states is as much of a creative myth as lightning bolts of inspiration. Creative work is less about knowing the direction that something is going and more about pushing something around every which way and seeing where it ends up, even if that end spot is a deep dark hole that you’d rather not revisit. The only way is through.