Hating what I create
Why I did it for years, and why I don't anymore
When I started out making art, I used to hate whatever I made. My artworks were always a bit too wonky, filled with mistakes, things that can really be improved a lot. There is a solid ~5 years of my work that I have probably lost because I would just not keep the things that I hated, and since I basically hated everything I made, there was almost no inclination to save anything.
Of course a part of it was that I really had the “gap” as Ira Glass puts it.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
―
Ira Glass
I knew the the stuff that I am making and the potential I have had a lot of gap between them and I just had to close the gap by filling it with bad work. Or the work that at least I considered bad. But somewhere in about ~7 years of making my work, I started noticing that now hating the stuff just came easy, it had become the default. Of course the inner critic has a way of convincing that it is being helpful.
See, the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t in love with my work, I always loved the process. That is why I got into the kind of work that I did. Sidenote, I’ve always said that that's the sign of working on something you love, when you feel like you are getting away with something. So while I loved the process and the doing bits, some part of me just hated all the outcomes. Honestly I don’t think I have ever been as unkind to myself as I have been when I reacted to some of my old work. I would sometimes tear up my old paintings (sorry little me), I would actively reject any praise, I would want to not ever really think about my work as worth anything.
“This work is shit” was internally a code for basically me showing how much I care for high quality. There was just perfect and since perfection is unachievable, the only thing that was left to do was to beat myself up over it. And then I kept wondering why making things felt so hard. What I never made the connection with was the fact that if the reward at the end of my making journey was a lot of beating up, I might just me making my life harder than it needs to be.
Another purpose that hating on one’s work serves is the fear of rejection. If I reject myself before I ever need to share that work with anyone else I wont need to face rejection that may come from outside. Sharing work is such a vulnerable thing to do, and self rejecting is a strong loophole to preemptively prevent any hurt. What could someone else tell me that I didn’t know about my own work if I over obsessively found flaws in it. (Very indian parenting behaviour)
Over time there was a distinct sense that the work that I create and how much good it is, has little to do with my feelings about the work and much more to do with making it high quality. And because I was making it so emotionally charged, by constantly critiquing it, I was actually probably making it worse than it needed to be. Obviously knowing something is not the same as implementing it.
One more thing that had never really struck me was that while I always thought I was hating on my part, as I started collaborating with people on different things, I was also somehow disrespecting others’ efforts. And obviously they haven’t really bought into my random weird narrative of hating whatever I have made. It was when my sister and I finished Mark and then a week later I bashed the game for some reason, and my sister looked at me and said “You can hate on your work, but you cant hate what I have done my best effort on”. A powerful moment to say the least, made me re-evaluate how I relate with my work. Because it made me realise that not only was I eroding the trust she had in me as a collaborator, I was eroding trust I had in myself as a maker.
That was 5 years go (almost exactly) and I decided that I want to arrive at neutrality in how I relate to my creations. I don't need to love them (it seemed like a tall order at that point) but could I not have a revulsion reaction. No one ever really tells you how hard it is to rewire hardwired patterns in your brain. Especially hate is a strong emotion, and emotions are what often do these wirings. It started with me not saying out dismissive things about my work and my effort.
A lot of the growth was in me noticing when I am unkind to myself, and substituting it for something kinder. “I hate this artwork” becomes “I can see these three flaws in it, and I will try better next time. Some of it also came from questioning that side of me that really wanted to continuing bashing, on who made it the ultimate authority. Overtime all of these helped me both reduce the emotional negativity and replace it with some neutral/positive feelings.
Where I am now, is that I am able to appreciate my efforts, the learnings and the time. 4 out of 10 times I am also able to appreciate the pieces themselves. So progress? Obviously its slow going but I do think its a foundational skill to have positive affect towards my work. So much easier to motivate myself to do something if I enjoy all parts of it. And these slow processes have resulted in feeling of building trust with myself. I am starting to trust I will not be front of the line in tearing myself down. Obviously I don’t know where the finish line is, or if it even exists for something like this, but I know that because of the increased trust I have in myself I am able to make it to the finish line of my projects more often. How do you feel about your old works? Do you treasure them? Do you hate them?