Every time I go online I am drowning in a sea of stimulation. I’ll never forget being young and passionate about drawing and discovering DeviantArt.com. There were so many incredible artists strutting their stuff throughout the never ending pages of each search I made. It made my heart beat fast. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the inventive images others had crafted so well. My cells swelled with inspiration, but when I finally pulled away and put my pen to paper, I found that every line I made was no longer good enough.
I have run into this phenomenon many times since. These wonderful mediums for expressing and sharing art and ideas online always had such a paralyzing affect on my perfectionist personality. Every creative idea or urge I experience is muffled by the voice in my subconscious that whispers, “Not good enough.” How can I compare to all that is already out there? All that has already been created? Every idea I have has already been crafted by more adept hands. My perpetual non-competitiveness leaves me forever idle.
Yet, part of me acknowledges that to improve I must be mediocre first. Surely, Salvador Dali’s first painting was not “The Persistence of Memory.” I wonder how many artists would have been silenced by the overwhelming influence of the superiority of others ahead of them. But perhaps their passion was simply to express, to create, no matter if it had been said before or better.
Something inside me sickens at the idea of creating something inevitably irrelevant. Why bother to add my voice to the void of so many other superior songs? Yet, I want to practice., I want to improve, to see what I could be capable of. How I wish I was able to overcome my fear of failure and futile effort. I could never understand why my passions are so easily dissuaded. I keep coming back to them though, the background buzz of florescent lights forever sizzling through my senses. I want to be a writer, so I will write. I want to keep fighting against this illogical loop I am trapped within. It is so hard to hear my own song in this grand cacophony.
Protect the Innocent 