Talk about self-doubt

I wrote the following way back in June 2004. It was a time when I was questioning my current career path and longing for a more creative path. At that time, I was trying to determine whether I had the raw materials to become a designer.

“I think I have to face it—I’m not super creative. People have this impression of me, that I am very creative. I hope they are right, but deep down I feel there is less creative bone in me than I have recently hoped. I have more an appreciation for creativity than I am creative myself. Should I settle for that and be okay with it? Or should I say that’s not true and dig deeper for my true creativity? Obviously, the latter seems more glorious to do, so I’ll take it. But I think I have to come to terms with the fact that I am not as creative as I really want to be. What, by the way, do I mean by creative?”

Though harsh, I think the self-doubt was necessary to push me to do things that challenged the notion. It also drove me to be around more creative people, which, in itself was a key to helping me see what actually made a person “creative”. It turns out that much of the doubts of whether I was truly a creative person were due to a misinformed picture of what that meant.

Eight years later, I almost laugh at how wrong I was in my self-assessment. But I am glad to remember that becoming a designer did not come through aptitude alone but through hard work. Some of that hard work was acquiring necessary skills and knowledge, and some was pushing through the naysaying. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. This is really a good picture of the creative process itself. You don’t sit there and wait for a spark of inspiration to come to you; you work and work and work until it comes, and then you are rewarded with results you could never have dreamed possible.

So I guess this is an encouragement to anybody who feels the way I did at one point: wanting to pursue a career in a creative field but feeling held back by the naysayers, whether other people or your own self-doubts.

Keep going!

18 New Commandments for Designers

dhri:

(Source: h-57.com, via sheasmith)