I am told I should not mix the personal with my work… but my work is personal. I also do not want this blog to just be self-promotion or merely a research notebook.
I feel that what I am about to say is relevant, because it relates to how I am and work… and I really want to write this all down and share it, so that I can see it again and again on this page and be reminded of how I felt today, and not forget the conclusions I came to.
Here goes:
For my entire adult life, with everything I’ve done I’ve felt I had to prove myself in some way, that I had to gain approval. Well, that has kept me from living fully, and from finding out what I can actually do. I have not felt very smart, compared to others, I always felt I lacked something. This has meant that when faced with a task to carry out, I would be paralised with fear at the thought of people judging me and individuating this lack.
I have always sabotaged myself with fear of not being good enough. Paralised, because I knew from the start that there were so many people smarter, better than me. Well, today I had a bit of a revelation, whilst running my 10 miles for training: I am doing alright, with my studies, despite this self-sabotage… but have been doing nothing but suffer through every assignment on my course, a course that I adore and have chosen, because I always felt flawed, “less than”. I have left things until the last minute again and again, too scared to let the world know that I was not as good as they imagined me to be.
Well, I am doing alright.
So now, I wonder… I wonder what would happen if I didn’t sabotage myself. I wonder what would happen if I didn’t worry that the people I admire and like found out that maybe I am not that clever or that great. I wonder how much more I could do. I wonder how much more I would enjoy my course, how much more I would enjoy my life. I wonder what I could do, then. I wonder what things I would be capable of. I wonder how much genuine passion I would feel, how much excitement.
Well, I am finally really curious to find out what I can do, what I am actually capable of.
I have realised that I can only do my best. If I am not clever enough, talented enough, pretty enough, funny enough, wise enough, good as other people are, then that’s that, I can do nothing about that. All I can do is my best.
What I have realised, is that I have absolutely no idea of what “my best” truly is, because I have always tried to do someone else’s best. Now I really want to find out, I really want to actually enjoy finding out. And as for my worrying about others judging me and deeming me not “good enough” for them… if my best is not good enough for them, then they can go (please forgive my language) fuck themelves. There, I said it. Now to stick by it.
PLAY 
The idea is to do what motivates you – and you alone. Some people can’t deal with an other person’s self-sufficiency and/or confidence and’ll try to project their own insecurities on you completely disregarding the fact that there will always be someone smarter or dumber than them (and you!). There are literally billions of connections you can make with audio, visual, text, and other sundry senses that I can never understand people who say that they have no ideas.
Collect the small bits of life in a small piles – the good, the bad – and in future works you will be able to take bits and pieces from those piles and create new work that’ll motivate you in strong ways because YOU will know
what these bits mean and how they relate to each other and to the composition as a whole. Mix it up…or if they’re all positive bits it can be your personal irony and if they’re all negative bits, you can proceed with a twinkle in your eye…
Rod